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.
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