A fun-filled Friday night

When it comes to letting their hair down on a Friday night, Kolkatans are more than willing to lead the way.

So, despite the first day of the zero hour restrictions in place, the regulars at Tantra, The Park, turned up to party.

Revellers were seen chilling out by the bar and couples cosying up with good spirits for company! Among the party people, the gang of Vishal, Sana, Dheera and Nikita had a whale of time soaking up the electronica tracks belted out by DJs Gaurav and Avinash. Long legged Suchira and Trishita looked pretty as they grooved and posed for our camera.

Winter takes a break in Kolkata, to return soon

KOLKATA: The sudden rise in the mercury has left Kolkatans apprehensive about winter having made a premature departure. With the minimum temperature leaping up to 13.9° C on Tuesday from Monday’s 11.4° C, Kolkatans were forced to dump their warm clothes in a corner.

But hang on. It isn’t yet time to put away your woollies, for, the met office says that chill would soon descend on the city.

“The cityfolk need not lose hope. The cold feeling will return again in a few days. What we are experiencing now is just a temporary phase due to an approaching western disturbance,” said regional meteorological centre director GC Debnath.

The city experienced the coldest day of the season on Sunday when the mercury had dipped to 10° C, four degrees lower than the normal mark. Last week, however, saw the night temperature going up as high as 16.9° C on Monday last. A high pressure belt and a cyclonic circulation over this region has caused a disturbance in the winter flow. But the decks were cleared again when the mercury started dipping steadily.

A western disturbance is playing truant with the chill factor. The impact of this development will be felt in south Bengal in terms of absence of cold feeling while it would bring rain in north Bengal.

The night temperature on Wednesday will soar up to as high as 16° C while it will be around 17° C on Thursday. The day temperature on both days will be around 28° C which is about two degrees above the normal mark.

“Both the day and night temperature will remain above the normal mark for the next two to three days. But winter is yet to depart,” added Debnath. According to meteorologists, winter in the city lasts till mid February.

“I was so happy with the chilljust two days ago. And I find it suddenly gone. But it is good to hear that winter will return again,” said IT executive Subhankar Sen of Bangur Avenue.

Kolkata walk: Tracing the heritage footsteps of the Raj

Few Kolkatans would have not passed by the iconic Writers’ Building. But far fewer still would be able to name the groups of statues standing atop this building. Or, in all probability, would even be aware of their existence.

Four clusters of statues, christened ‘Justice’ , ‘Commerce’ , ‘Science’ and ‘Agriculture’ , with the Greek Gods and Goddesses of these four streams (Zeus, Hermes , Athena and Demeter respectively) flanked by a European and an Indian practitioner of these vocations, adorn the building. But then, with the usual bustle around this seat of governance, it is easy to miss these and many other details of this Raj-era structure. And these are precisely the things that a ‘heritage’ walk around Dalhousie Square (BBD Bagh now) would reveal.

Take, for instance, the adjacent St Andrew’s Church. A plaque installed in front of it gives out an interesting bit of information about the rooster installed atop its tall spire. But it needs an intrepid ‘explorer ‘ and Kolkata lover like Iftekhar Ehsan (‘Ifty’ , as he prefers to be addressed) of this city’s premier group that conducts heritage and other interesting walks to inform you that the spire served a strategic purpose during World War II.

“Pilots taking off or landing or Red Road (in front of Fort William) would use the spire as a reference and navigation point,” he informs a spellbound group of tourists. Walking around Dalhousie Square with Ifty is a fascinating journey of discovery. This walk– ‘In the footsteps of the Raj’ — takes off from the arcade of the Great Eastern Hotel, the first hotel in Asia to be air-conditioned , says Ifty, before he reels off other enthralling bits of information about this hotel.

On the exterior wall of a structure a stone’s throw away from the hotel lies embedded a marble plaque that advertises the business of Federico Peliti, an Italian exporter of virtually everything under the sun. “Peliti’s , the eponymous restaurant started by Federico, was the finest Italian restaurant this side of the Suez till it closed down in the 1960s. The Mullicks of Shovabazar even got a zebra imported through Peliti to pull a small customized carriage,” relates Ifty.

Pointing across the street to the east gate of the Raj Bhavan, Ifty tells his ‘fellow explorers’ (as he prefers to address his clients) that the British started the practice of installing fierce-looking lions atop arched gateways to the their mansions . The rich Indians in ‘black town’ (the Indian quarters of the city to its north) started replicating these, but British soldiers would periodically demolish them, only for the rich Indians to install them again.

This stopped when the concrete lions atop the gateways to the Indians’ mansions started wearing a docile smile instead of a fierce growl, thus satisfying the British, says Ifty. He talks about the history of St Andrew’s Church (it was a court house which was demolished to appease inflamed local sentiments after the miscarriage of justice in the conviction of Raja Nandakumar, a pious soul, who was framed by Warren Hastings ), about how the senior employees of Royal Insurance Company (across the GPO) had the privilege of riding their horses right up to their first and second floor chambers, and about many other absorbing and little-known aspects of the history and heritage of the structures in the city’s central business district.

‘Explorers’ who take this tour would get to see the interesting murals on the gateways of many structures and would get to know that the canon mounted on the wings of a dragon in front of the north facade of the Raj Bhavan was a gift from the Emperor of Nanking. St John’s Church is the last stop of this tour and its interiors, with period furniture and plaques in memory of many Europeans who died in this country or while travelling to and from it, is like stepping back into time.

‘Calcuttawalks’ started four years and three months ago to fill a long-felt need for well-conducted heritage walks in this city. ‘In the footsteps of the Raj’ was the first heritage walk by his company. Very soon, five other walks, ranging from one exploring cultures to another celebrating Park Street, were designed. Now there are the cycling tours, the ‘wetlands walk’ and the ‘bird watching’ walk.

Beware of that unknown missed call

KOLKATA: Think before you ring back after missing a call from an unidentified number to your cellphone. It could have been from a racket and a call-back would come at a premium rate, sometimes as high as 200 a minute.

A part of the amount you pay will be deposited in the accounts of the fraudsters. The hi-tech telecommunication technology that was developed mainly for public services has turned into an easy money-making device for fraudsters.

This is how it works. The scammers hire a premium-rate number from a telecom provider and then give missed calls to unsuspecting people. As the latter call back, they pay a higher charge and a part of the money goes to the account of the scammer who hires the premium number. The fraud, which started nearly a decade ago in Europe and western countries, has hit India, including Kolkata, from the beginning of the year. It is also known as the ‘Wangiri Fraud’ and originated in Japan in early-2000. ‘Wangiri’ literally means ‘one ring and cut’.

Over the past week, several Kolkatans have received missed calls from numbers that start with +22455. Among them is a university student. “Apparently, it looks like a Mumbai number as the city’s STD code is 22. I have several friends in Mumbai and the call came late on January 1. Without any suspicion, I called back and the woman who answered said in Hindi that the number belonged to a Mumbai-based cellphone company. She started telling me that my cellphone number was among the lucky winners of a draw and I would be awarded a cellphone by the company. She also asked for my address,” said the student. He claimed the woman spoke for around eight minutes and when the call ended, he realized that he had been charged 400 for it.

The student is not alone. Several others have received missed calls from similar numbers that start with +22455 and were charged 50 to 100 or even 200 per minute for the call back. Cellphone service providers in the city fear that the number of victims may be in the thousands.

Clueless subscribers called up their cellphone service providers who clarified that the call had been made to international premium-rate numbers and the best way to avert such fraud was to not call back to these numbers. Probe revealed that some fraudsters sitting abroad had been making missed calls to Indian cellphone users randomly with the help of a database. They have hired a few international premium rate numbers (IPRN) which cost little.

The IPRN service providers offer a lucrative rate for their rental services. Premium Telco is such an IPRN provider which offers $.08 for every incoming call to the hired number.

According to telecom experts, such IPRN providers receive 700 to 1,000 calls every day. For police, it’s a ‘salami fraud’ which suggests that the fraudsters are apparently getting a nominal amount, but swindle a hefty sum at the end of the day. A senior city police officer claimed that some people are even getting threat calls. He believes that the calls were routed through a Voice over Internet Protocol ( VoIP) system. With the Internet Protocol (IP) remaining masked most of the time, it is difficult to trace the country of origin.

With the number of frauds through such IPRN increasing, European countries have already taken stern action against scammers and legal help to prevent fraud. In August, 2010, the London Metropolitan Police rounded up nine fraudsters for a similar crime. Their network was active in the Middle East and South East Asia. Now, scammers are proffering IPRN numbers based in countries like Latvia, Guinea, East Timor and some African countries where the law is not stringent enough.

DC (special), detective department, Kolkata Police, Murlidhar Sharma, said he was aware of the problem. “But we are yet to get any complaint in Kolkata. If someone has been a victim, they should contact the police,” said Murlidhar. Telecom experts, however, believe that the fraudsters might very well be sitting in India. “They communicate in Indian languages, which suggests that the calls were routed to India. An Indian fraudster can also hire a series of such premium numbers,” said an expert.

City gets record Jan rain in 10 yrs

KOLKATA: Is it winter or monsoon? The answer is obvious, but Kolkatans can’t help thinking otherwise.

The city has received 71.2 mm rainfall over the past 24 hours – a record for January over a decade, says the Met office. Such intermittent rainfall accompanied by thunder is in itself quite unusual for January. But the weathermen have no good news. Kolkatans will have to endure this weather for at least a couple more days, they say.

The culprit is a cyclonic circulation over Orissa and adjoining areas that has blocked the normal flow of winter in these parts. It has led to the formation of convective clouds – rare in this time of the year – which have triggered the current spell of rain. The sky will start clearing up only when the cyclonic circulation weakens.

“Formation of convective clouds is extremely unusual in January. The Met office has recorded 71.2 mm rainfall over the past 24 hours which is the highest rainfall in January in the last 10 years. The cyclonic circulation is likely to lose its momentum gradually. So, we can expect the weather to improve from Wednesday. The chill will return once the sky clears up,” said G C Debnath, director of the Regional Meteorological Centre.

The Met office has forecast rain for Kolkata on Tuesday. From Wednesday, the sky is expected to start clearing up, but there is a possibility of rain or thundershower on that day as well. Monday recorded a maximum temperature of 21.2°C, five degrees below normal, while the minimum at 17.4°C was three notches above the normal mark. The next two days will see the maximum and minimum temperatures hovering around 21°C and 17°C respectively.

Some areas of Howrah experienced heavy rain and hailstorm on Sunday night, uprooting trees and destroying houses. A woman in Uluberia, Sumitra Sahu, was injured when her house collapsed during the storm. The worst affected areas were under Bagnan block I and Uluberia. Around 50 mud houses were destroyed. A large number of cranes in these localities were found dead, possibly due to the hailstorm. There were reports of flower farms being destroyed in the district.

Intermittent rain is expected in parts of districts like North and South 24-Parganas and East and West Midnapore. North Bengal, however, will enjoy sunny days though morning fog could create a problem for those at the wheel.

Untimely rain lashes city

KOLKATA: Kolkatans woke up to an overcast sky resembling monsoon on Friday. A sharp spell of rain followed, making people wonder if this was indeed the peak of winter.

Even meteorologists said rain at this time of the year was very uncommon and blamed it on Cyclone Thane. Its residual effects are playing havoc with winter’s momentum in these parts and also led to the shower. According to the Met office, the weather is unlikely to change for now. Rain is forecast in Kolkata and other parts of South Bengal over the next few days.

“A cyclonic storm at this time of the season is very rare in the first place. Thane has created a disturbance in winter’s path. Rain in this season is not at all usual. This rain was due to the combined impact of a cyclonic circulation over Jharkhand and adjoining areas and a high pressure belt over Bay of Bengal,” said G K Das, meteorologist at the Regional Meteorological Centre, Alipore.

A cyclonic circulation has developed in the lower atmosphere over Jharkhand and its adjoining areas apart from a high pressure belt over Bay of Bengal. As a result, there is abundant moisture in the air that is pushing the humidity level up.

“The sky will remain cloudy and there will be light and scattered rain in Kolkata and parts of south Bengal over the next three days. The night temperature, too, is expected to remain four to five degrees above normal during this time,” added Das.

Though Friday’s maximum temperature at 26.5°C was a degree above normal, the minimum temperature was six degrees above normal at 20.0°C. The day temperature over the next few days is likely to remain two to three degrees below normal.

The high pressure area has also blocked the path of the cold Northerly winds. But the Met office is hopeful of the winter chill returning in the first half of next week, once the sky clears. The shower on Friday morning was sharp in certain localities and light in others. Districts like Burdwan recorded 9 mm rainfall till 8.30 am.

“The morning shower was so unexpected. I had some plans lined up. But the rain played spoilsport and I had to abandon some of them,” said musician Sanket Bhattacharya of Naktala.