Better spaces for better conversations & why they matter.

Humans are at their core social beings; associations are important, belonging is good for the heart and mind and connection is crucial for cultivating civic senses of mutual obligation and community. With all the interest in community building and platform creation that’s circling the impact and regenerative worlds, it strikes me as interesting that the art of conversation itself may be being lost as we give way to debate over dialogue, soundbites over substantive explorations and where declaring a winner or a champion solution takes precedent over the joy of the exploration itself. It’s as much the how we’re engaging with each other as the what we’re engaging in, that matters.
Finding spaces for connection.
I’ve always been compelled to bring people together and provide a space for sharing, spending time to unpick a topic and seeing what magic emerges. I co-anchored a group nearly a decade ago called “Chai-Paani”, a Sunday morning hang-out at the London Parsi Café Dishoom, where over bottomless chai we’d talk about interesting topics without the burden of the British after-work cultural compulsion to drink alcohol and engage in superficial repartee. We’d chat, some would stay on for brunch and the conversation would continue over chilli-cheese toast well into the afternoon. The conversations were anchored in a specific topic initially and then we’d go from there. There was something powerful about bringing people together over tea that extended into breaking bread. Sharing an experience, and particularly the power of sharing food, can’t be underestimated.
During the COVID pandemic’s lockdown the need for space to talk, reflect and come together without actually talking about COVID or children (for my friends who were in the depths of home-schooling nightmares), became super important. For their own sanity. For me, the over-simplification of thought and the lack of nuanced exploration into why things were happening, how they were unfolding and what feelings they were evoking, wasn’t good enough and I was frustrated. To redress the social isolation that we were all feeling we gathered once a month on zoom with a conversation catalyst and in some way by having the opportunity to disconnect from what was going on in the world, we could connect more viscerally to each other and hold on to a sense of community, albeit virtually.
A tale as old as time.
Gathering for discussion is an ancient tradition; from India’s Panchayat village council system where people come together to deal with local disputes and govern community affairs to similar Native Indigenous talking circles in North America, bringing people together was an opportunity to both collectively work through challenges but also provided a sense of collective belonging. Conversations, oral traditions of storytelling, ceremonial and ritualistic discussions and gatherings have been used over generations to bring social cohesion to communities and helped to keep them resilient over time.
In more recent times, talking through collective trauma has been used to find broader societal resolutions – for example in Colombia in the post FARC and civil war era, South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth & Reconciliation Commissions centred on conversations about human rights and acknowledging their violations, and Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts allowed similar post-genocide governmental rebuild. Conversations have been the foundation for healing and for local, national and global reconciliation.
Given the power of collective dialogue is evident, it's boggling that efforts to bring communities together, for disagreements to be mediated and for voices to be heard before escalation where Truth & Reconciliation Committees are needed, aren't done nearly enough. Spaces for such work are relegated to wishywashy sounding "peace commissions" in the bowls of organisations like the United Nations and / or are given to faith leaders to navigate. Their value isn't taken seriously enough.
At a time when there’s so much noise and the ability to connect is constantly available in our pockets, the way in which we gather, connect and communicate is increasingly much more important, more sacred. When social bonds are being ruptured, we wanted to build bridges and connections that created trust by exposing shared values and people’s capacities to share openly, vulnerably. This doesn't necessarily mean the evoking of tears. More often than not, the public disclosure of not knowing or not understanding a topic (like why gender-neutral toilets are an issue) caused more anxiety than other seemingly personal sharings. We started with little expectations and hoped that a couple of people would show up, sticking to our feeling that these needed to be deliberately small to be powerful. What resulted is that people started looking forward to the monthly cross-cultural gathering and they came back irrespective of the topic of the conversation, a sense of belonging was being formed.
Why an “adda”?
We use the Hindi word “adda” because of the feeling the word evokes – it reflects the space itself, the vibe of the conversation and the action involved in its creation. Though the origins of an adda are similar to the European Salon and the coming together of intellectual elites (in this case English-speaking men), engaging in intellectual discourse became a staple in Bengali culture in particular in early nineteenth century colonial India. It was a response to people wanting to make sense of westernisation infiltrating their lives and culture and the global geo-politics they now found themselves to be a part of. Where a British (half Sindhi, half Panjabi via East Africa) Indian got a sense of its significance is not entirely clear to said person!
The adda evolved in Bengal over time and became more inclusive; of class and gender and the continuation of the oral tradition meant that it wasn’t reserved to the English-speaking. In Hindi and Urdu, the word literally means “a place of gathering” but in my mind an adda is a little bit down-and-dirty; a bit informal, a bit messy, an opportunity to lose your shit in all ways; tears, frustrations and in laughter and for that to be totally ok, in fact, for it to be encouraged. As Debarati Sen points out, “Adda is a kind of informal social talk in Bengali, among friends and colleagues, but its content is always of intellectual significance, addressing issues such as local/ global politics, art, literature, and music. Casual conversations and gossip are common in many societies, but the creative performance of this genre by Bengali elites made adda a marker of an urban middle-class identity, especially in response to the cultural hegemony of British Imperialism.” People actively make an adda as much as attend one and therefore to be part of one is as much about personal and cultural identity as it is about social joie de vivre. The fact that they were initially a bit of a rebellious act to decode empire and imperialism, well that’s a happy bonus and lends itself to our mission to unpick the messy!
Intentional design.
To be an “authentic” adda it’s suggested by some that it can’t be planned or have an agenda and the conversation should just exist for the joy of having a conversation. The power of the space lies in its creativity and ability to weave between the serious to the banal seamlessly and without the constraints of time and space. If only! I’ve sat in Spanish plazas in awe of intergenerational interactions and the gathering of the older generations that are seemingly endless and the chatter that covers everything from neighbourhood disputes to romance. In reality though, it’s often hard for us to carve out the time for a good chat. With time a premium gift any one can offer, having a conversation catalyst to seed an idea seemed like the way to go – fully endorsing the fluidity between the serious and the banal…whether people bring chai or a g&t along with them is up to them and their timezone!
The aim with the adda is to move away from the transactional interactions that Hua Hsu describes as ingrained in western life. Where conversations are combative and competitive and where someone always has to win, to traditional gathering circles where the joy is in the exploration itself. Arguments and disagreements are not a bad thing per se and don’t have to be polarising; only if the intention isn’t to win, but to discuss, debate, learn, explore and ultimately do and be better.
If I’ve learnt anything from my experience of anchoring multi-cultural collaborations it’s that cultural, contextual and linguistic clashes on topics of geo-politics, development, and the many possible solutions makes for magic. Using and exploring diverse viewpoints allows for exposing, calling out and working with cognitive biases and allows for collective growth. Maybe we could all win?
We do have some basic principles that set the intention, tone and design of each adda. They’re consciously small and an intimate space, everyone’s on camera unless harmful to them in some way (we had people join from bed with long COVID) so that we’re present and can respond to body and facial cues as well as verbal. Our key principles are that we are Small, Curious, Open and Inclusive. Taking inspiration from Native Talking Circles where listening without judgement is encouraged, our circles hopefully encourage healing as well as empathy. It’s also why the dreaded chat box in zoom is disabled. Deep conversations require deep listening and by limiting distractions can we create a container of respect, patience and tolerance. Silence and pauses aren’t a bad thing either.
Embracing the messy
We have always wanted to provide a different perspective or angle to a topic rather than repeat what’s been said and explored. We don’t want to be part of the noise but want to provide a space to cut through it.
We continue to debate internally about what constitutes a topic to be “messy enough”. We’re not here to sell books or to showcase binary points of view but to have genuine conversations that embrace complexities and nuances. We’re up for different angles to be explored that make people reflect and question themselves and their long-held beliefs. Messiness is as much about the discomfort or just not knowing that something brings as much as it is about the topic itself.
Coming with a sense of curiosity to learn and explore is a sign of a great adda-goer. Maybe they shift what they do and how they do it as a result, that’s a bonus. We can only really expect that if people share openly of themselves – what they know and what’s way more fun, what they don’t. The understanding builds social and emotional resilience but more importantly, the art of sharing itself and the self-disclosure means people have to take a leap of faith and trust the process in the space. Technically speaking it’s been found that those that do, show physiological markers of social connection – I like to think it just makes us better humans and stops us being an arse!
Hsu proposes that “Conversation can change our minds while sustaining our souls” and that research shows that people who engage in frequent “substantive” conversations are more satisfied in life. Americans crack me up with their need for social science to confirm what cultures that are social and community-centric have known instinctively for generations. That said, he does call for less polarised spaces for conversations to occur and that the political and social climate in the US makes it so much harder for nuance to exist and be explored. Given the article is called “what conversations can do for us” I think the problem is right there though - the dominant individualist culture is so ingrained that the expectation is that even in the art of talking and conversing which by its design is a communal act, there’s something personal to be gained rather than given. With our addas we know that the success, if that’s the right word, of the space, is totally dependent on the energy, wisdom and sharing of those who take part. You reap what you sow.
How many does it take to be an adda?!
As we take on long-form one-to-one conversations, I’d like these to be opportunities for explorations into worlds less known, for different perspectives to get airtime and for these to inspire self reflection. These conversations remain an opportunity to tap into vulnerabilities, ask hard questions, to not always have an answer and for that to be ok. We call them "chai & chats" because of the power that coming together over chai brings; it evokes a certain kind of magic. The buck stops with me – I have to be ok with sharing of myself and represent all of those listening who also don’t necessarily have a clue but are here for the ride. It’s only then that I can hope that people listening will carry on their days a little bit better for having shared in the conversation and that the reflections and actions linger into the following days and weeks.
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