Earthquake holiday

"What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow," Gopal Krishna Gokhale had noted several decades ago. However, when it comes to earthquakes, what India knows today, West Bengal knows much later. That is what happened when Kolkata experienced sharp tremors on Monday morning due to an earthquake in Manipur. While a large chunk of the city's population was woken up by the jolts, the regional meteorological department was oblivious to it because its digital seismograph was not working. Thus, officially, there was no earthquake in Kolkata till the time the India Meteorological Department, Delhi, issued a bulletin. "There are 100 other seismographs in the country, which were all working. So it does not matter if one was not working," said an official of the Regional Meteorological Centre of Kolkata. Interestingly, there will be no earthquake (officially) in Kolkata till January 15 when the seismograph is expected to be back after repair.