What makes an ADDA better than another one? The quality of the discussion? The amount of fun? What makes an adda the best adda of your life?
This is quite difficult to say okay so this adda was better than that adda as we had more fun. How do you define more fun? At least, is it possible to single out one event? I couldn't.
I've had so many great, outstanding hangouts in my school, high school, university days that it just was not possible for me to single out one adda where I could say, okay this I had the most fun. Or, this had the best quality discussion. Maybe I'm very lucky in that way that I had so many fun hangouts, so many great intellectual discussions. This probably has to do with the fact that I used to hang out with many different groups and types of people. Used to.
I am having a really hard time deciding which Adda I would consider the best adda I have. Maybe I'll just skip this week's contest....? Let's just leave it here for now. Let me share a small story from my life.
It was waaaay back in 2009. I think I had just started grade 11. Had loads of friends, but you know how it is in the school days. There's always a big circle of friends, and then there's a very small inner circle. These are the friends you think are there to stay till your last breath. Through thick and thin.
I had two such friends at school. And the best part was we lived just next to each other. Probably 5-7 mins distance. We 3 had been best friends for as long as I can remember, since grade 6..? Maybe even grade 5....memories blur with time, you know!
Because we lived so close to each other, there was almost not a single day we didn't hangout. Even when school was off, weekly holidays (Friday and Saturday,) winter vacations, summer vacations....we used to meet up and hangout almost every single day. Now you see why it's difficult for me to single out one event! When you have so many to chose from, forget choosing, I can't even remember exactly what happened at what hangout.
I have long since had a falling out with the two of them and I don't think we've met once in the last 4-5 years and our contact has come down to barely a greeting on special occasions like birthdays, Eid. But I miss them, I really do. And whenever I think of them, amidst all the blurred memories, there's one day that shines bright. Crystal clear. Almost as if the dying battery of a camera using all its remaining power to focus on, zoom in on one last object.
So, back to 2009. I took part in a national competition and was selected to represent my country in the First ever Youth Summit and I had to go away to Japan for maybe a month. Time flew by pretty quick as i was always on the run there, barely having the time to sleep, working on group projects, cultural collaborations with representatives from different countries and what not. But there was a suffocation buried somewhere deep down. I know what that suffocation was now, but I didn't know it back then, so I'll leave it out for now.
Alright, fast forward 1 month....
....and I just landed home, still pretty early in the morning. I reach my house, have some quick breakfast and crash straightaway as I was exhausted. I was planning to go visit my friends or call them over as soon as I wake up. I wasn't halfway through my sleep when one of those two A-holes kicked me off my bed! Took me a moment to understand what had happened. How was I on the floor, tangled in my blanket!
By the time I was back to full senses, we 3 broke into laughter! I got up from the floor, gave them a bro hug and we just sat there in my room and chatted for hours. Just normal stuff, nothing special. Things we have been doing for years now.
Remember that suffocation buried deep? Somewhere in the laughter it found it's way out and off it went, many miles away, when no one was looking!
My mom made us some tea and snacks. Two of us made fun of the other, who put in 4 teaspoons of sugar in his cup of tea! 4 heaped teaspoon, imagine that!
We had lunch together later at my place. Oh the taste of home food after eating burgers and pizzas and bland dishes for a month! We spent the rest of the afternoon with them trying to figure out how many girlfriends I made while I was away! We went out for a stroll in the park in the evening. Just the usual stuff we do. Probably had some Peaju from a local vendor and got a bad case of diarrhea later that night :D But that could have easily been from the Icecream we tried later that we SHOULD NOT have tried!
After a month of speaking mostly English, it felt breezy to speak in Bengali again, with the people that used to my definition of comfort zone!
We sat down by the sidewalk and brainstormed about our next business plan! (yeah we had tons of them, most of which never saw daylight!)
Time flew so fast and it was time to return home. With the two of them, it was always easy!
There was nothing different about this adda. There was nothing crazy and out of the world we did, like the time we got ourselves chased by the police! Oh what do you know, maybe the camera had little bit more battery left to focus! It had none of the heart pumping adrenaline rush of watching Bangladesh vs England world cup match live at the stadium.
It was just a simple, plain adda. But yet, I don't know why, this is the one that I remember so vividly, this is the first adda that comes to mind every time I miss those two a-holes!
Maybe that's what it's all about in the end. Maybe it's not how much fun you had, how much you laughed at an adda or what the topic of discussion was, that makes an adda the the best adda of your life, but the one that always stays with you, with contrasting bright colors in a crowd of pale, fading away memories. Maybe it is the one that comes first to your mind when you dive into the dusty pages of long lost memories. That is what makes it the best isn't it!
I'm not sure what it is about this specific adda that I always keep going back to it, relive it over and over. Maybe it was that relief from my unknown suffocation. Maybe it was how special it made me feel that they couldn't wait even a day to meet me after I returned. I don't know what it is. But it is what it is! The best adda I've ever had has to be the one that I can not forget, the adda that I wouldn't trade for the world.
BDCommunity Witness
