Addabaaz

The story

The best thing in any room is the people in it, and the best thing about Pujo is that everyone is in the same room at once.

There's a patch of grass at Maddox Square that has been yours, in your head, since you were sixteen.

It isn't yours. Thousands of people sit on it every Ashtami night. But every year, at about ten, your people drift towards it from every direction, and every year it works. The school gang arrives from Gariahat. The college gang arrives from the Metro, late. Somebody's cousin from Pune, somebody's flatmate from Delhi who has never seen Pujo, somebody's new boyfriend who has to be interviewed. Nineteen people, a circle on the grass, a dozen bhaars of cha, and the conversation of the year.

That's your Pujo. The pandal is lovely. You saw it. You'll see it again on the way out. But the pandal is the venue. The adda is the festival.

Adda isn't chatting. You know that, even if you'd struggle to explain it to the flatmate from Delhi. It's the long, looping, argumentative, affectionate conversation that goes from this year's themes to which of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal will break everyone's heart this season, to who broke up with whom in 2019, to what is actually wrong with the city, and back again, without anyone steering. Manna Dey sang that the Coffee House adda is gone. You have spent your whole life proving him half wrong.

You are the glue. You made the group chat. You sent the pin. You counted heads at the Metro exit and noticed who was missing. When someone's phone died at Gariahat, you found them, because you always find them. When the crowd pressed in, you made the circle bigger instead of leaving.

Some time after midnight the adda starts to break. The Night Owls peel off to walk North. The Romantics vanish in pairs. The Para Kids go home to their paras. You stay till the last three, because someone has to see everyone home, and because the last hour of an adda is always the best one.

Five more minutes, you say. It has been three hours. Nobody minds.