Addas vs Electronic Screens

My father, Shankar Abhyankar (I call him baba) is 85.

Every morning, at 06.45, he goes to Shivaji Park. Shivaji Park is not exactly a park, it has just a little grass in the monsoon. Shivaji Park is circular, surrounded by a parapet for people to sit on. With a circumference of 1.2 km, two thousand people can sit on it at a time, and on weekends, nearly that many do. (See the clip). Baba meets his friends there. Each group has a historically earmarked place. They discuss anything and everything until they feel it’s time to go home. This is his morning adda.

The evening adda  

I sometimes take a morning walk at Shivaji Park, when I usually meet friends, familiar faces and soon-to-become friends. On one such morning, I met a couple of young boys. One of them I knew, and he introduced me to the other.

 “I am Ravi Abhyankar.” I shook his hand.

“Oh, do you know by any chance Shankar Abhyankar, the sitarist?” he asked me.

“As a matter of fact, I know him very well. He is my father. How do you know him?”

This boy must be about twenty-five.

“Your father and I are good friends. We drink together in the evenings.” The boy said.

Wrist and tongue workout  

This is baba’s evening adda. Its age range, as you may guess, is from 25 to 85. I am told the group gathers each evening at a bar. At the table, everyone has a glass in front of him. They talk and drink, drink and talk. The waiter keeps refilling. Whenever a person gets up, the waiter gives him his individual bill, which he pays off. I don’t know how long this tradition has been going on, but baba has been going to such an adda for the past thirty years. Obviously, some members pass away, and new members join. There is no way the twenty-five year old boy I met has been part of the group for long.

Conversation replay

Last month, on 13 April, I had thrown a party for my Moscow friends. Every time I visit Moscow, we have a meet-up. We talk, we eat and drink, we hug and kiss before parting for another year, until my next trip to Moscow.

I have similar gatherings, sometimes called reunions, with my school friends, college friends, relatives and ex-colleagues.

A few years ago, I bumped into a college classmate, A.S..

“I live just here. In that building. Come, come.” He fondly invited me to his house. We chatted for more than an hour. We recalled our classmates, one after the other, and shared whatever information we had on them. Some were successful CEOs, many had settled abroad, a couple had passed away.

Two years later, I happened to meet A.S. again at the same spot, and he invited me to his house again. After spending an hour there, an epiphany struck me. We had repeated our conversation from two years ago. Almost word for word. I decided not to visit him again and never have.

Electronic screens: man’s best friends

In the past, I would go to a travel agent to book my tickets. Mukesh, my neighborhood agent, knew everything about my family, and I knew about his. He started running after hearing about my marathons. I haven’t seen him for more than five years now.

Many years ago, I would visit my bank regularly. Take a token, wait in the queue, fill forms, and go to the teller. You talked to the other customers. You knew the bank staff personally, and they knew far more about you than just your bank balance. I don’t need to personally go to my bank any more.

I don’t visit bookstores any more. Not just books, Amazon delivers most things without me leaving my computer desk.

This internet magic results in a massive saving of time. One assumes we use this saved time to meet friends, spend more time with our families. But as technology makes our life more efficient, we seem to have less and less time. What happens to all the time that was saved?

The extra time is now devoted to electronic screens. Smartphones, tabs, Netflix, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Twitter.

Electronic screens are now man’s best friends. People are seen typing in their Smartphone at the traffic light, or if desperate while driving. The young generation has its neck permanently bent down, and ears shut with white plugs.

Virtual can’t be reality

Technology has now allowed us to remain connected. If we are connected, why meet in person?

But technology has managed to capture only two of the five senses. What we see and what we hear can be recorded, but not smelt, tasted or touched. On SKYPE, the girl’s image at the other end may be of a very high resolution, you still can’t smell the perfume she is wearing. The deliciousness of the bright yellow Alphonso mangoes can’t be tasted on the screen. And touch, human touch, can’t be replicated on a screen of any size.

Human touch is known medically to have health benefits. Hugs increase the levels of oxytocin bringing blood pressure down. Kissing a child makes us happier, otherwise why would we do it? Even in conservative societies, handshakes are accepted.

If the virtual world could substitute reality, we could have simply watched different destinations on YouTube. Why travel to other countries and face the long flights, jet lag, packing, unpacking? Because what we experience in the real world simply can’t be compared to the video clips on internet.

But if we accept travel can’t be substituted by watching those destinations in films, how are we happy degrading our personal relationships and friendships to text messages? Why is the practice of a group of friends (or people drinking together) meeting daily getting outdated?

In 2016, I went to Moscow four times. As usual, I called a wholesale party of my friends in January. On my second visit in April, I discussed the idea of another party with two friends.

“But you had a party only in January. It is too soon. Nobody will come.” Both were convinced. That year I didn’t call another party.

Nostalgia meetings

Annual reunions are formula meetings usually for the sake of nostalgia. Rarely will they have intellectual arguments or passionate debates. Mostly, people will recall the past when they were together, if curious find out what the others do, and hasten back home because kids (or now grandkids) are waiting.

Some of my friends stay a few hundred meters from my house. I haven’t met many of them for more than a year. Because they have no time. (Why bother to meet when there is what’sApp?). How are some people short of time when everyone is given exactly 24 hours a day? Should I continue to call them friends? Or ex-friends?

Corporate adda vanishes

I believe that personal human interaction is one of the greatest sources of happiness. Just as we are expected to interact with our family on a daily basis, historically,  people would interact daily with their friends and neighbours.

Earlier the workplace allowed you to interact with your colleagues on a daily basis. In the early 1980s, I worked for A.F.Ferguson & Co., chartered accountants. We worked with pen and paper. The partners dictated the audit report to their secretaries, who typed them on  typewriters. We chatted almost all the time while working. This was the corporate adda, if you like. It also allowed you to ‘kill time’, a major requirement for an office worker.

In a similar office today, you would see most people wearing glasses while immersed in computer screens. The office is like a graveyard. Screens have conquered the workplace as well.

Adda: an ancient tradition   

Addas are informal voluntary personal gatherings, ideally on a daily basis, for intellectual discussions. In ancient Greece, Socrates and Plato created their deep philosophical arguments through such dialogues.

In India, Bengal and Maharashtra are considered among the top cultural states. They have produced some of India’s greatest authors, singers, composers, musicians. Theatre is strong in both the states. Bengal and Maharashtra are the only two states that produce special Diwali magazines. But also, the adda culture is best developed in them. Bengal was a communist state, so Bengalis argued much and had no shortage of time. But Maharashtra is not far behind either.

The ultimate aim of life is happiness. Money and work satisfaction may be priorities for some, but if they don’t lead to happiness then what’s the point?

Having a group of friends whom you meet every day and talk to intellectually without an agenda seems like a simple recipe for happiness. My father is living proof of this. It is my dream to form a similar adda for myself. Possibly in this city of 20 million, I may be able to find five or six people who prefer real humans to electronic screens.

Ravi