I play the guitar casually, mostly in close gatherings. I like what a few chords can do to an evening, setting a rhythm, lifting the mood, or simply becoming part of whatever is already happening around the room. I am still learning, and I would like to become much better at it.
These days I play with friends in a band called Sutra . Much of our music grows out of adda, which is probably the most natural setting I can imagine for it.
Adda is one of those Bengali words that loses something in translation. It is less an activity than a way of spending time together. A peaceful evening stretches out over tea and food, laughter, arguments, and conversations that wander from politics to literature, cinema, gossip, music and back again.
In ours, someone eventually reaches for an instrument and the conversation simply finds another soundtrack.
The habit stayed.
I started gaming on my fifth birthday, when my father gave me one of those cartridge-based 8-bit TV consoles that plugged straight into the television. It became one of those childhood gifts that quietly stuck.
These days I move between PC and PlayStation, mostly through single-player games and the big franchises I grew up with. What usually keeps me interested is the same thing that pulls me into books and films, a world with enough detail and atmosphere to disappear into for a while.
