Festivals
Durga Puja
Associations
Learn Bangla
Beng. Marriage
Baby's Name
Art & Craft
Great Indians
Beauty Care
Recipe
Astrology
Beng. Section
Bengal
Calcutta
Tiger
Beng. Calendar
Wallpapers
Movie
Music
E-Card
Shopping
E-Puja Room 
News
E-mail
Month's Events
Weather 
Chat
Travel
Join Us
Advertise
Website links
Link to us
Guest Corner
Services
WebSite Design

Adda in Calcutta

Parks and alleys of Kolkata have adda-loving people relaxing in their hangouts, idly studying the traffic and people go by. The middle-aged frequent locality shops or dispensaries while the unemployed choose the roadside tea stall to exchange pleasantries.

Though addas have usually been a male privilege, women are not far behind. Women of the same neighborhood gather mostly in the afternoons to converse and exchange information and views. The topics of conversation generally range from recipes, family problems, TV serials or films to price-hike of commodities. The venues of such addas are typically local parks, play grounds, ladies' compartments in suburban trains and the trendy kitty-parties amongst women of the higher crust of the society.

Adda is often seen by the Bengali intellectuals as a bit typically Bengali, a crucial part of the Bengali nature or an indispensable element of Bengali "life" adding to their "vitality". Benoy Sarkar, a sociologist of the 1940s spoke in 1942 of the "vivacity" of adda that has helped Bengalis "uphold and enhance" their normal instincts as people. "What we need is adda," he

proclaimed in one of his conversations. In his preface of the book "The Addas of Calcutta", the historian Nisithranjan Ray portrays Bengalis as "an adda-loving sect." The Bengali writer Nripendrakrishna Chattopadhyay wrote thus in the 1970s in admiration of the sect: "Bengalis enjoy a tremendous reputation in the world as the people best at practicing adda. No other race has been able to build up such an institution as adda which stands above all ideas of need or utility. To enjoy, adda is a primordial and perennial principle of life — no other sect have succeeded in acknowledging adda in life as Bengalis have." Later he adds: "So deep is

the spiritual connection between adda and the water and air in Bengal that adda . . . has now spread to the [Calcutta] Corporation, offices, state-meetings, verandahs, tea-shops, sports-pavilions, to the district organizations of political parties, to schools and colleges— everywhere. Everywhere, it is adda that exists in many different guises."

Prev Pagevv