It was the intellectually stimulating pastime of the wealthy upper-caste male with time on their hands. "Adda was an expression of the process of trying to cope with ones' Westernised status within British supremacy and its effects on the dignity of the westernized Bengali middle class as a whole, " writes Debarati Sen, associate professor of Comparative Cultural Studies at University of Houston, in her research paper Speech Genres and Identity: The Place of Adda in Bengali Cultural Discourse (2011). These educated and wealthy Bengali males tutored their children in contemporary Western subjects to get jobs with the East India Company and do business with them smoothy and gathered daily in their private premises to partake in casual but long discussions on endless topics – thus popularising adda. A new affluent Bengali class emerged who worked as clerks, administrators and merchants under the English East India Company. The city soon attracted rich merchants and traders from all over Bengal. The British colonialists left indelible marks on Kolkata's cultural heritage, influencing food, language, literature, philosophy and even the art of conversation. Back then, Kolkata was a cluster of humble settlements on the left bank of river Hooghly, but it quickly expanded into a city under British rule, serving as the capital of British India from 1772 to 1911. In 1757, English East India Company won the Battle of Plassey and gained control over most of Bengal.
Traditionally, a perfect adda should include a little bit of everything – politics, art, literature, science, debate, gossip, jokes, rumours, food, cigarettes and tea – and can take place anywhere: in a private home, a local tea shop, the park or a veranda.Īlthough the origins of adda are murky, this beloved ritual is thought to go back to colonial times.
It is about ideas and events happening all around us."įor Bengalis, who are known for their gregariousness and love of talking, engaging in adda is an essential part of the day. "It is a kind of unplanned mental exercise where we not just talk about ourselves and our families, but we go beyond that. "We are not expected to produce something out of an adda," Aditi Ghosh, head of the linguistics department at University of Calcutta, told me. While "adda" can loosely be translated as "hangout", this loses the nuances and oversimplifies the action. Markedly different to small talk or chatting, it is best described as an informal group conversation that's long, fluid and relaxed in nature. By August 2020, more than 200 prosecutions were being made each day in Kolkata, most of whom were also engaging in adda.Īdda is a beloved pastime that's unique to Kolkata. While Deb and the others on the clip were widely ridiculed, it soon became evident that the labourers flouting lockdown were only the tip of the iceberg. The clip went viral on social media, spawning hundreds of memes. When another local caught them on camera and asked why they were flouting the lockdown, one of them lashed out, " Amra cha khete eshechi, adda marte na, cha khawa hoegeche bari chole jachi" ("We have come here to drink tea, not to give adda, now we have finished so we are going home"). On 22 March 2020, the first day of the countrywide pandemic-induced lockdown in India, labourer Mridul Deb was enjoying a cup of tea with several others at a roadside tea-shack in Kolkata, the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal.