Adda: rendezvous; meeting place
I stood where the Rajgarh Road ended, just beyond the railway crossing
and watched Moni Bhattacharjee stripping down to his skin. The
occasion: a 3 hour-long film festival being held there in a makeshift
open-air theatre. It was organised by a group of young people wanting
an audience to showcase their work. The setting: incongruous in the
extreme. There was the railway track at the back, noisy cycle and auto
rickshaws in front and in between, an audience thousand or more in
number. Over it all, was the larger than life image of Moni suffering
the ennui of life in silence. The film: Wind of Change by Rajiv Borthakur.
It is a depiction of life fragmented in today’s topsy-turvy times, and
of the mundane activities of life: waking, sleeping, walking, waiting,
dressing, undressing…
To my surprise, I noticed that none among the audience shuffled
uncomfortably in their seats or coughed discreetly or made catcalls
either as they watched Moni undress. I felt then that it had been wrong
of me to attribute puritanism as endemic to the Guwahati psyche. But
then, I had drawn my inference from events like vandalisation of
fashion shows in the name of cultural preservation, and from the lived
experience of my neighbour Mrs. K complaining to my mother that I, as a
girl, should not return home very late every day. I just had to thank
the young people from one of the various addas of Guwahati for acquainting
me with this other face of the city.
***
Guwahati is where the capital of Assam, one of the seven states
(federating units) of the Northeast frontier of India, is located. It
used to be a sleepy town till the acceleration of commercial
development reached such a pitch in the last decade or less that it
lost its balance – it remains, as in the peoples’ attitudes, a small
town; outwardly however, it can compete with any third world metropolis
today.
And like any growing city, it attracts a large number of people who
come here looking for livelihood avenues.
***
Most of the members of the adda
Moni frequents are not from Guwahati. They came to the city from
different parts of Assam to pursue their respective professions –
mostly connected to the film industry. While some of them have been in
the industry close to ten years, some are relatively newcomers. But
everybody shares a common passion – cinema. It was this passion that
dominated most of their daily conversations and culminated in the film
festival where the Wind of Change had
been screened. The adda
members called it the Addabazor Suti
Sobi Prodorxon: Screening of Short Films by the Addabaz (adda lovers).
***
The adda culture is nothing
new to the Guwahati scene. An informal get together of like-minded
individuals, addas have a
dichotomous nature and are viewed with wide ambivalence. On the one
hand are some addas outside
pan shops, under roadside trees and in hip and happening food joints,
where the members meet regularly to play cards or carom and to gossip.
These regular hangouts are mostly identified with loafers and the
general inclination is to equate adda
with decadence. On the other hand are the addas of poets and writers, or
professionals and workers, also maybe on roadsides, or in coffee shops,
tea stalls and other eating joints or perhaps at a member’s house.
These addas are looked at
with much awe as the spawning ground of brilliant ideas and
intellectual innovations.
The older generation of Guwahatians met at Panbazar, the book land of
Guwahati – also considered the intellectual hub of the city. Addas still happen here, some of
them having survived decades. But today’s young and happening
destination is Rajgarh, opposite the Guwahati Commerce College, where
one can see different kinds of addabaz.
One of these kinds represents the flashy and consumerist pop-culture of
Guwahati, which has placed the city among the topmost in the purchasing
power index of the country. Rich kids with big cars and ‘modified’
bikes may be seen parked outside fashionable eating joints, enjoying
their money power. Close to them however, might be another adda where a group of people would
be equally enjoying themselves talking about art, literature, world
affairs, family gossip, and what have you.
The adda which Moni and Rajiv
and a number of their friends frequent also meets at the Rajgarh Link
Road. This particular adda
had its genesis with its members meeting between long working hours in
the nearby editing studios. They would get together to smoke or chew tamul (betel nut) or sip tea and
to have some conversation. Gradually a fraternity developed with the
realisation of their common passion. Numbers swelled. The adda became their permanent
address. So much so that anybody looking for young people associated
with the industry would either meet them at the adda or in the event of their
absence, leave a message, delivery ensured.
***
The idea of organising a short film festival came up in the course of
regular adda discussions.
Notwithstanding what was portrayed in the introductory film of the
festival, Moments (of Adda), these young people met
not merely to talk into their cell phones and drink tea with cigarettes
dangling from their fingers. That was part of it. But they also had
moments of intellectual introspection and times when they
constructively contemplated on their shared desire to ‘do something
different’. The idea took a few months to grow roots. Then, Amar Gogoi,
one of the earliest adda
members, took it upon himself to push the project through. Owing mainly
to his enterprise, the adda
members and their friends put together their films, publicised the
event, pooled the required funds and set up the modest infrastructure
for the screening within just a month.
The leitmotif of the festival was freedom – of expression,
of participation, of appreciation. The idea of freedom was inherent in
the choice of setting: the open-air theatre in the street. The entire
process by which the festival was put together also spoke of the same
idea of unrestraint. None of the 32 films submitted for screening were
rejected. Any subject matter was allowed – the painfully moralising
Values and Vision was screened as was the intensely erudite Las Vegasot. No limit was set on
the length of the film or the age of the maker. Thirteen year old
Raeesha Tanvir Altaf, for instance, showcased her film Khakuar Paro Sorai. Neither was
experience a precondition: from a veteran like Altaf Majid to an
amateur like Abinash Lahkar, everybody was provided a platform. And
finally, nobody was barred from viewing the films or from airing their
views about the films.
Those who did air their views though, chose to talk not so much about
the individual films as about the entire event. For them the remarkable
fact was the ‘something different’ that the festival signified, and the
intellectual labour and out-of-the-box thinking that went into making
it a reality. The genre of the short film also provided novelty. Larger
significance to the phenomenon came from the realisation that it was
all done by a group of talented but cash strapped young people without
any institutional support. It was the sole urge to ‘do something’ that
had made them put together an innovative film festival in such a short
time and with funds less than INR 10,000 (USD 217 approx) – most of it
contributed by
the members of the group.
As it happened though, the films showed a poor understanding of the
short film genre. In fact, technical, grammatical and dramatical
shortcomings in most of the films were quite conspicuous. Most of the
filmmakers suffered from poor execution of ideas and inability to
translate individual visions into moving communicating pictures.
Language barriers also often proved insurmountable. Where amateurs were
making the films this is perhaps understandable, but quite a few of the
adda members are
professionals. Paucity of time has been cited as one cause of all
shortcomings. But one of the possible reasons could have been that
everybody tried to do everything. An editor trying his hand at
direction or an actor or a director turning scriptwriter may not have
been the best use of their respective specialisations. What if they had
pooled their expertise and come up with one extraordinary flim? A
different experience would then have awaited the Guwahatians.
***
The adda film festival was
one burst of enthusiasm, a sustained effort of a month, and a temporary
shedding of the characteristic Assamese attitude of lahe lahe (sloth in
equivalent terms) by a group of young people and it exposed an entire
city to the possibility of alternatives to established institutions,
avenues and perspectives. It also made people realise they had an
aptitude for such alternatives. There’s hope for the city yet. But what
about Mrs. K?
***
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