Spirited exchange

In Kolkata, adda remains an institution, where people drink the joys of an agenda-less conversation. Call it a stress-buster or what you may, the power of the adda to soothe a ruffled psyche is seen to be believed, writes GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN.

TWO men walk up to each other. They meet. They smile. They strike a conversation. Which begins with the price of fish in the market that day, and leads on to Mamata Banerjee's fiery tirade against the ruling Government.

Minutes tick up, and the two men, deep in animated discussion, fail to notice the hands of their wristwatches moving. Their debate veers round to more profound subjects. India's foray into the space age and Bangladesh's border adventure are among the topics which flow out of their heads. The tramcar's lumbering existence and Vishwa Bharathi's desperate attempts at monopolising Tagore are orchestrated into passionate words and exchanged with brutal frankness.

The two men talk ceaselessly, keeping alive an institution unique to Kolkata. Termed adda, its closest English meaning can be "spirited conversation", which has no agenda and loosely follows the thoughts of those in it.

An adda can happen in the most unlikely of places: coffee-houses, street corners, public transport buses, suburban trains and, oh yes, over a cup of tea, the beverage often energising tired tongues, which at times find it hard to keep up with surging minds.

Kolkata's famed coffee-houses in the central district have been seeing hours of wonderfully rejuvenating adda among a host of talents. The late R. P. Gupta, historian and writer, once told me about the two men he was most fond of spending time with. One of them was the late Kamal Kumar Mazumdar, whose literary masterpiece, Antarjali Yatra, would have won him international recognition had it only been in English. Mazumdar's sense of humour was a fantastic balm for even the most tired of souls.

The other was the late Satyajit Ray, whose elegance and eminently British dry wit was a perfect counter point to Mazumdar's pyrotechnics. Ray had not yet made his first pathbreaking "Pather Panchali", but said Gupta, "we all knew then (in the early 1950s) that here was a man whose creativity was about to explode and flood the world."

The Coffee-House adda drew even Jean Renoir, who was then in Kolkata in connection with his film, "The River". "The French director and his wife downed several cups of the drink as they chatted away time and tide."

Adda, of course, is not confined to the learned or matured or the aged. It is common and popular even among the young. Kolkata's other coffee-house in the college district is a hot spot for girls and boys that has witnessed the emergence of the most divine and radical ideas over a long period of time. If these addas helped the flowering of poets and writers, and aided and abetted budding romances (a smile slyly exchanged over a table top had the power to get the heart into a frenzy), they are also known to have inspired revolutionary movements (Naxalism, for instance).

Even today, the coffee-house adda continues: the young men and women gossip and "gupshup" despite their harried existence. The older lot too have not given up a pastime, whose ability to soothe and relax people is so attractive that it has become literally addictive.

The former West Bengal Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, is said to smile only in the course of an adda at his friend, Snehangshukanta Acharya's home. And, when Promode Dasgupta used to join them, it was really lively.

That is precisely the aim of an adda, which stimulates a kind of lightheadness, excellent to bust the day's stress, or, maybe, to help face the ordeals of an afternoon.

Poet Samar Sen's dingy office in Central Kolkata once served as an adda point for eminent foreign Press correspondents like Neville Maxwell of The Times, Lawrence Lifschultz of The Washington Post and M. Viratella of Le Monde. Sen's laconic comments proved to be valuable sources of information during the Emergency which the journalists included in their despatches. So much so for the tremendous utility of an adda, which virtually helped the world, in this case, to catch up with the truth.

Movie-maker Mrinal Sen, economist Ashoke Mitra and former Statesman editor Amalendu Dasgupta were some of the others who spent many, many evenings together in their living rooms talking about and arguing out their joys and sorrows in the hope of finding a little solution, but greater peace.

Adda, of course, can take wings to travel out of the confines of a home. Street corner "talks" - where you find a group of teenagers - are still an exciting phenomenon in a city which sees no reason to give up something as invigorating as an adda. Television and internet have really not been able to encroach upon adda time; they may keep men and women away from cinemas, not adda.

A little rare, though, is a conglomeration of girls, but on my last visit to what was still then Calcutta, I did spot them - skirt or jeans clad - sitting on parapet walls outside their colleges and "giving adda" as a Bengali would say.

I also saw a group of euphoric young women on the lawns of the Victoria Memorial chatting away to the fading rays of the sun. They were no different from their male counterparts, and seemed to be enjoying a tradition as much as anybody else would. And when they finally move out - not just out of the garden - the days of adda, one is sure, will keep haunting them like the sweet notes of a great symphony.

Take the case of an elderly teacher, now living in England. Every time he returns to Kolkata, he makes it a point to stop by his favourite tea stall, where he had, as a young man, spent hours in the splendoured spirit of adda. His mates have all gone way, but the memory of those magical moments remains with him. So too will adda, which will go on ..."

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