Know what goes behind a Bengali's mind when he engages in an 'adda session' over cups of tea

 

Bengalis are always fond of ‘adda’. Be it over cup of tea or over a platter of fries in the evening, adda and bengalis go hand in hand. Also when it comes to politics or football, the arguments switch over to a never ending process. These are the two things which never bore a Bengali. So, when it comes to news, these two are the most favourite topics of a Bengali ‘Bhodrolok’. As Bengalis are always politically opinionated, he always has a longing for good quality Bengali news.

The relation of Bengalis with news is not new. It dates back to 1760, when James Augustus Hickey started his newspaper The Bengal Gazette from Kolkata. Though it was closed down within a short period, it paved the way for more newspapers to come in the following years. Raja Rammohan Roy, the First modern man of India, started two newspapers, one in Bengali and the other in Persian. The Bengali newspaper Sambad Kaumadi was one of the pioneers of Bengali news in India.

Even during India’s freedom struggle against the British, newspapers published by freedom fighters and intellectuals were instrumental in garnering mass support against the British rule in India and spreading the ideas of nationalism among the common people. But the definition of news has changed over time. From the roughly printed newspapers, the media industry has undergone a lot of changes. Not only have the contents within the printed pages have changed, but it also strives to cater to the needs of the readers, providing them news not only from politics or sports but also from the world of entertainment.

With the advent of Television and lately the digital platforms as a medium of Bengali news, the prospect of news has changed altogether. In recent times Entertainment news have been major crowd pullers in the digital as well as television media. Not only the scope of news has gone up, it now fulfils the needs of people from almost every background. With the digital media slowly taking over old medium like the newspapers, people have more and more options to choose from. The digital media is booming, so are the young Bengalis who, although brought up in the world of technology, has not got over the tradition of ‘adda’ over politics and sports, with the new addition of technology and entertainment news in the purview of ‘adda’.