Rail board chief inspects toy train route and stations
Lohani seated on a toy train near Sukna on Tuesday. Picture by Passang Yolmo
Siliguri:
Ashwani Lohani, the chairman of Indian Railway Board, on Tuesday promised that all necessary restoration works would be taken up for preservation of the world heritage status of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR).
The chairman said he would look into possibilities of reducing toy train fares and said more second class coaches would be introduced in toy train services so that tourists as well as locals could afford the travel.
The railway official arrived at New Jalpaiguri on Tuesday morning and took a special toy train – two coaches hauled by a steam loco – to the hills.
He visited a number of stations, the DHR workshop at Tindharia, the printing press at Kurseong and also interacted with railway employees, local people and passengers of other toy train services.
“We are aware of the world heritage value of the DHR and will do all necessary work for the conservation and restoration of the DHR,” said Lohani at Sukna, from where he started his inspection.
During the statehood agitation in the hills last year, the toy train services had come to a halt in June. Also, a section of agitators had torched two stations -Tindharia and Gayabari-and damaged a portion of Elysia Building, the DHR headquarters in Kurseong.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> West Bengal / by Bireswar Banerjee / March 21st, 2018
A Bata wore a Bata at a Bata store in the city on Tuesday.
Christine Bata Schmidt, the granddaughter of Bata founder Tomas Bata, visited the store in South City in the afternoon to launch a CSR campaign.
It was no surprise that Christine chose Calcutta to launch the project. “Calcutta will remain our heart in India,” Christine, a director of Bata Shoe Organisation, the holding company of Bata India, said.
In the early 1920s, Czech shoemaker Tomas came to India to source rubber and leather. Most Indians walked barefoot then and he sensed an opportunity. In 1931, he set up a factory in Konnagar. The unit started producing rubber and canvas shoes for the first time in India. Later the factory was moved to what came to be known as Batanagar.
“His idea was to be the shoemaker to the world. Great shoes that were affordable,” Christine said about her grandfather. She will visit the country’s oldest shoe manufacturing unit in South 24-Parganas on Wednesday.
Thomas J. Bata, Christine’s father, was crucial in expanding the brand throughout the country and making it a household name.
She entered the store around 3.30pm. After looking at the models on display, she picked some shoes while interacting with the children who were there for the launch of the CSR campaign.
The project is being partnered by Nanhi Kali – an NGO managed by KC Mahindra Education Trust and Naandi Foundation that provides primary education to underprivileged girl children.
For this campaign, Bata India has introduced Ballerinas with illustrations by children from schools adopted by the Bata Children’s Programme, a global programme for disadvantaged kids. The shortlisted drawings have been displayed on the inner sole of the Ballerinas. The shoes will be available across more than 200 stores in India. With each pair of Ballerinas sold, Bata will provide Rs 65 to the project.
“Bata hopes to secure a brighter future for these girls by reducing school dropouts and improving learning levels,” Christine, a member on the board of Earthwatch, a global NGO that works for sustainable environment, said.
“Calcutta is historic. At the same time, it is very alive. I do enjoy that,” Christine, the chairman of Bata Shoe Museum, a footwear museum in Toronto that refects the evolution of footwear, said.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Debraj Mitra / March 21st, 2018
A team of scholars from the English department of the Vidyasagar University has travelled through one tribal village to another in an effort to save dying tribal dialects, scripts and folk performances.
The entire body of nearly lost dialects and scripts that was conserved from there will now be a part of a massive digital archive. Folk performances will also be showcased in a two-day open-air public presentation on the university campus, starting Tuesday.
The team visited habitats of communities like Kurmis, Mundaris, Shabars, Santhals in West Midnapore, Purulia, Bankura and Birbhum in south Bengal and also documented their visit to the Totos, Bodos, Dhimals, Garos, Ravas and Rajbanshis of north Bengal. The team visited the villagesto conserve their dialects and scripts, which are nearing extinction.
During field work, they witnessed performances like Jugi Jatra, Sitachuri, Lalita Shabar, Churia Churiani that were popular in the folk life of the Jangalmahal tribes even two decades ago, but are now no longer practised because they are not considered entertaining enough anymore and do not get audience.
The research team extensively quarried written scripts in old diaries, faded manuscripts and oral traditions from homes of elderly people, many of whom were also performers of these folk art forms. “Linguists working in the team have deciphered the texts, which are a curious mix of Oriya and Bengali dialects.
They are transcribed in phonemic forms and then translated into English for a wider audience,” said Debashish Bandyopadhyay, head of the department of English and also co-ordinator of the project.
The project, because of its uniqueness, has been supported under the departmental research support (DRS) scheme of UGC’s special assistance programme. Vice chancellor and historian Ranjan Chakraborty, has also helped out in the research.
The project and the two day programme, that has been christened, “Performance and the Prospects of Tribal Folkloric Culture of Eastern India”, has generated a lot of attention among international publishers and scholars of indigeneous cultures, who work towards conserving endangered cultures.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Kolkata News / by Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey / TNN / March 20th, 2018
From ship builders, dentists, shoe-makers — to chefs. How did the Chinese in India get stuck with the identity of the Chinese chef? A report from Kolkata, the only Indian city with two Chinatowns where the Chinese came 220 years ago
(R) Monica Liu with her husband. Liu, an Indian Chinese, is one of the most successful restauranteurs of Kolkata. (Photo courtesy: Monica Liu)
You could almost say Tong Atchew was a good mushroom growing on foreign soil. A mushroom does wonders for the soup, the stir fry and as stuffing. No flash, no permanent dash, but it still stands on its own even as it adds to the flavours of the mix into which it is thrown.
Atchew, a middleman, believed to be the first Chinese immigrant in India, arrived in 1798. He managed to strike a deal with Warren Hastings, the governor-general of British India, and became the owner of a sugar mill near Kolkata.
In the late 18th century, Kolkata was the terminus, the port and the transit point to pretty much everywhere else. The Chinese in India, especially the Chinese of Kolkata, the only Indian city with two Chinatowns –– the first in Tiretta Bazaar has existed since the 1800s, the second, in Tangra since 1910 –– consider Atchew The Ancestor. Here was someone who made ‘leaving home’ a success story, in contrast to staying put, the established wisdom for that age. He consolidated the image of the Chinese as a hardy migrant who slogs for his success, is a credit to his community, and keeps his own counsel.
At Tangra, the second Chinatown, of Kolkata. (Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)
The Chinese who came to Kolkata were mainly from coastal China, then ravaged by civil wars; many landed in between the two world wars too. All had different skills and traditions, which they innovated, in order to survive. The Hubeis, who were “teeth-setters”, became dentists. The Cantonese were ship-fitters; by the ’50s they had moved into carpentry. The Hakkas were talented shoe-smiths and leather manufacturers. All of them came to India to work. None of them came here to cook.
But as the example of Monica Liu, a Hakka housewife who has become Chinatown’s most well-known businesswoman over the past 10 years, shows, the restaurant business can become an area where race or ethnicity may find accommodation, and success –– if it does not challenge established tastes too much.
In the ’90s, Liu cooked for the late chief minister Jyoti Basu at his home after his return from China. In 2012, writer Amitav Ghosh did a lunch with the Financial Times at Liu’s flagship restaurant, Beijing. Here, he discussed the opium trade, linguistic adjustments made by men who met at sea featured in his Ibis trilogy over beer and steamed bhetki. In 2018, Liu is preparing to face cricketing legend Sourav Ganguly in the popular Bengali television game-show, Dadagiri.
Two Bengali boys watching Liu, as she does the rounds of the tables at the Beijing restaurant, delay stuffing the last tiger prawns into their mouths and greet her saying they have seen her appear in some TV programme. In block heels, cropped hair and thinly pencilled eyebrows, Liu’s is as public a public face as is possible in a community that shuns the media.
Proprietor and head chef Monica Liu at her Beijing restaurant in Tangra, Kolkata. (Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)
Image issues
“Our food is suited to Indian tastes,” says the owner of five restaurants in and outside Chinatown, returning to our table. Liu opened Kimling, her first, in 1991. “In my restaurants, I always keep a chilli-garlic gravy, popular with customers, ready. Sometimes they want their chicken dry or with gravy. But this is not to say my food is Indian-Chinese. It is Chinese,” says Liu playing the elder stateswoman of Chinese cuisine to the hilt.
Restauranteurs in Tangra, riding the restaurant boom in the ’90s, had no problem saying they sell Indian-Chinese to create a space, as it were, for selling their food. “It was part of their entrepreneurial logic to boost saleability,” says anthropology researcher Piya Chakraborty. But the renown of many Chinese restaurants now owned by non-Chinese (such as hotelier Anjan Chatterjee’s Mainland China, which he started in Mumbai in 1994 and which he brought to Kolkata, and musician Debaditya Chaudhury’s Chowman chain in 2010) has produced a new kind of anxiety. So the assertion of ‘authentic Chinese’ to be got at Tangra, and not just at central Kolkata, the original Chinatown, is important now.
Food networks
The small eating houses in Tiretta Bazaar, central Kolkata, was originally meant to feed the local Chinese working men, numbering around 25,000 till the early ’60s, before the outbreak of the Indo-China war of ’62. Central Kolkata was a Cantonese stronghold. When a new throughfare split the area, the Hakkas, the other sizeable Chinese immigrant group, re-located to Tangra. The collective sense of security in mixed neighbourhoods, where each minority recognises the other as such (central Kolkata had substantial Anglo Indian, Jewish, Sindhi, Bihari populations), however, stopped many Hakkas from moving out.
Dominic Lee, a Hakka, who owns Pou Chong, one of the most well-known brands of sauce and noodles made by the community near Tiretta Bazaar, is perceived as Mr Lee, the sauce-maker, not the Indian-Chinese sauce-maker by the neighbourhood. His professional identity, he says, has never felt eclipsed by his racial identity. (That is why he is able to field questions of “authenticity” without feeling defensive about it.)
This is not to say that the Chinese do not maintain strong community networks. Lee’s products are used by Tangra outlets like Liu’s Beijing, as much as all over central Kolkata eateries. When casting directors of the Salman Khan-starrer Tubelight were scouting for a youth to portray “a Chinese”, Lee recommended Thomas Chen, a Cantonese mechanical engineer and singer in Kolkata, for the cameo.
David Rocco, the popular Canadian-Italian TV host, has interviewed Lee for his programme Dolce India. When quizzed about the ‘authenticity’ of his sauces, Lee’s answer is pat: “It’s authentic for this area. The Hakkas are gypsies. Each group of Hakkas has its own Hakka cuisine.” No two Bengalis, he says to further explain his point, make pulao or paturi the same way.
Owner of the Pou Chong brand, Dominic Lee at his shop at Tiretta Bazaar, the first Chinatown. The combination of the Pou Chong tomato and Pou Chong green chilli sauce is usually used with the Kolkata kathi roll. (Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)
The Pou Chong brand, started by Lee’s father to cater to the large Chinese population, was badly hit, a second time, when families were uprooted at the outbreak of the Indo-China war in 1962. “It was a collective trauma for the community, which may explain the wall of silence it maintains now,” says Chakraborty.
The war with China nearly emptied central Kolkata; hundreds of Chinese were deported to and jailed in camps in Rajasthan on mere suspicion of being ‘Chinese agents’. Monica Liu and her family were picked up and sent to a prison camp as was Thomas Chen’s mother in her teens; they were released without compensation or apology after several years. In a cruel twist of fate, the role he had to enact to crack the Tubelight audition was to play a Chinese soldier interrogating an Indian spy.
“I can never touch a potato or a gourd since then. Even the smell of their cooking scares me,” says Liu. They were a staple in her prison camp. For many Indian Chinese with similar experiences, family traditions around food have just not come together because of interrupted family life. Chen says he learnt to make a Chinese-style whole steamed fish, but not from his mother. The lack of schooling, because of formative years in jail, may also have pushed many of those from the earlier generation towards informal sectors like food, other than ‘office jobs.’
By the ’70s, the situation stabilised. Local Chinese boys entered the city’s five-star kitchens as hotels opened their first Chinese restaurants. “They popularised our products. Chinese, by then, had become part of the city’s street food. Every street corner had someone selling chow on carts. The combination of the Pou Chong tomato and Pou Chong green chilli became the Kolkata kathi roll sauce,” says Lee.
The eating culture of the central Kolkata Chinese developed in close contact with other migrant communities at the margins of Bengali society. Their restaurant clientele – fellow Chinese – was assured due to their still sizeable population in this area so they were under no pressure to suit their food to a ‘Bengali’ palate. Jayani Bonnerjee of OP Jindal Global University, a specialist on the Indian-Chinese community, talks of a dish called ngapi, a shrimp paste of Burmese origin, that was eaten at both Chinese and Anglo-Indian homes on Bentinck Street, though it’s not clear who influenced whom.
“The Chinese and Anglo-Indians had an affinity for one another; for ease of schooling and professional networks, many Chinese had become Christians. They shared schools, met each other in church, visited each other’s homes,” says Bonnerjee. When Waldorf, the famous Kolkata Chinese restaurant on Park Street, changed hands, the ownership went to an Anglo-Indian family, the Mantoshes, most probably in the ’90s, she points out.
At Bow Barracks, central Kolkata. The Central Kolkata Chinese stay in mixed neighbourhoods. (Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)
Indianisation
The Supreme Court ultimatum in 2002 to shift out 592 tanneries in Tangra, where the Hakkas on leaving central Kolkata went, was another big jolt for the community. It nearly emptied out Tangra. Most left for Canada. Those who could not; converted the godowns into restaurants. This is where the Indianisation of Chinese restaurants began.
The story of Tangra’s Indianisation is classic migrant-nama: left with lemons, they made lemonade. But when they did, that was inadvertently the first step taken by the community to build, with the Bengalis, a shared culinary mythology.
Chinese eating houses probably took their initial reluctant steps towards serving ‘Indian Chinese’ when Kolkata’s office-goers passed through the tannery areas in Tangra on their way home and showed up at the factory-cum-kitchens of the Chinese to request for fried chicken to go with booze.
Bengalis who frequented these Chinese joints wanted Chinese food, but on their own terms — fried, spicy and saucy. Enter the Chilli Chicken (chicken nuggets dipped in corn slurry, deep fried and finished up with soya sauce) and Schezwan Chicken (made by tossing deep fried chicken with a reddish sauce out of a bottle and Sichuan pepper, a key ingredient). Sichuan pepper, when it met Bengalis inside Chinese restaurants, began to be called ‘Schezwan’, so goes the joke.
Authenticity-seekers eat in Central Kolkata places like Eau Chew and Tung Nam now; Tangra is the spice-lovers’ haunt. Such customers might, says Monica Liu, on the rare occasion, ask her the passive-aggressive question, “what is your cooking medium?”, which she knows how to answer. “We use the same oil, or as much oil – the way you like your biryani,” she says fixing the customer with gimlet eyes.
The last Chinese waiter to take orders at the tables of Chinese restaurants like Liu’s Beijing, is not known. Till the ’70s, the Chinese restaurant was not the first place where Bengali boys looked for jobs. Now they do. This is now Beliaghata boy Babu’s stage. In Liu’s kitchen, Biharis are firing up the woks, and two Hakkas are chopping the vegetables and supervising them. The word is in many ‘Chinese restaurants’ Nepalis and south Indians are doing the cooking. Peter Chen, who runs the famous carpentry firm in Poddar Court, central Kolkata, says as much but won’t identify the restaurants. “They are doing a fine job, let them be,” he says.
Mechanical engineer Thomas Chen with his son, Travis, at his home in Bow Bazaar, central Kolkata. ‘I am almost Bangali,’ he says. Chen has done a cameo in a Salman Khan film and also sings in Bengali, Hindi and Mandarin. (Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)
The Chinese have taken up Indian food as well. When dal poori entered Chinese homes has not yet been documented, but Peter Chen, the businessman likes it. Chang Chen Fa, a Hubei chef loves it. Thomas Chen, the singer, eats it. Chen, who welcomes us into his home with tea and Chinese prawn wafers, says his pork is spiced with Everest turmeric masala. “I am almost Bangali,” says Thomas Chen, who speaks the flat, unaccented Bengali spoken in urban Kolkata.
Many young Indian-Chinese like Chen, especially those who were born in India, say experts, are increasingly trying to define their Chinese-ness in the context of their immediate surroundings. Chen and his family participate in community art projects around Tiretta Bazaar, the area he grew up in. He is not looking to be Chinese in China.
As we leave Kolkata, two images remain with me. Monica Liu barking at her employees to slice the carrots well, which pretty much sounds the same in every language. And Chen singing khayal at his home, which he says, helps him hit the high notes when singing in Mandarin.
People often say the Chinatowns of Kolkata are going or gone. Both, I think, daily renew themselves.
source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Lifestyle> Art & Culture / by Paramita Ghosh, Hindustan Times / March 10th, 2018
Across the ages: The Denmark Tavern in a painting by Peter Anker, dated 1790 | Photo Credit: Historical Museum of Oslo/Special Arrangement
After two years of renovation that cost ₹5 crore, the building is ready to host visitors to the historical town of Serampore in West Bengal
Mr Parr, who formerly kept the London Tavern, has taken the new upper-roomed house near the flag-staff in Serampore, directly facing the Barrackpore Cantonments and fitted up the same in an elegant and convenient manner, both as a Hotel and Tavern.
This was one of the advertisements published in the Calcutta Gazette on March 16, 1786, announcing the opening of a tavern by James Parr on the banks of river Hooghly.
Another advertisement, two years later on April 3, 1788, makes a mention of the establishment.
Noting a change of hands from James Parr to John Nichols, who formerly kept the Harmonick Tavern in Calcutta, the advertisement goes on to say: The gentlemen of cantonments, or parties going up and down the river, and all others who may honour Mr. Nichols with their countenance, may depend on the utmost civility and every endeavour to give satisfaction and very moderate charges. Bed, Lodging, and Board, by the week or month.
In 2010 – 11, more than 200 years after the tavern’s heyday, a group of restoration experts studied a building that stood in complete ruins, surrounded by debris.
“Nobody remembered the original name and function of the ruined building. It was like detective work to search the archives for information, and it felt great when I realised that it must be the well-known Denmark Tavern and Hotel, which was located at the Nishan Ghat where the Danes kept their flagstaff and salutation cannons,” said Simon Rastén, historian, National Museum of Denmark. It was decided that the building would be restored and reused.
Grand unveiling Across the ages: The Denmark Tavern in ruins in 2009.
After two years of painstaking restoration work, the Denmark Tavern was reopened on Wednesday. Ambassadors of a number of Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, were present on the occasion.
The renovation cost of ₹5 crore has been borne by Realdania, a private association in Denmark which supports philanthropic projects in the realms of architecture and planning, and the Department of Tourism, Government of West Bengal.
The State Tourism Department is in talks with an agency that will maintain the restored building, which will serve both as a café and a lodge.
The coffee house is inspired by the double height central atrium of the Indian Coffee House in Kolkata and five rooms have been opened for boarders. Officials are hopeful that within a few weeks the tavern would be buzzing with visitors as it was in the late 18th century.
Experts from the National Museum of Denmark, officials from the West Bengal government and conservation architect Manish Chakraborti have tirelessly worked on the restoration of the building since October 2015.
Bente Wolff, project head of the Serampore Initiative, National Museum of Denmark, said that Serampore was administered by Denmark under the name of Frederiksnagore till 1845, when Denmark sold its Indian possessions to Britain.
Stressing on the importance of maintaining the identity of old trading towns like Serampore, Ms. Wolff said that The Denmark Tavern was located on a peaceful stretch of the river, only a two-minute walk from Serampore’s main street. “This would be an be an attractive space for citizens and tourists where you go for shopping, restaurants and cafés, and a morning or evening stroll along the river front.”
Meticulous work
Mr. Chakraborti, whose work on the St. Ola Church in Serampore won the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award in 2016, said the conservation of the tavern was a more difficult job.
He said that archival research in terms of topographical maps, paintings and photographs were supplemented by building archaeology and sample excavations of foundations and plinth by clearing all the debris.
Along with the tavern, the experts have also restored an old registration building built by the British that will serve as a heritage canteen on the Court complex of Serampore.
Ms. Wolff said that the former Danish Government House built in 1776 and predating the tavern was being restored. “By the end of this year, we hope to put together an exhibition on Serampore’s history at the former Danish Government House,” she said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Shiv Sahay Singh / Serampore – March 01st, 2018
Man who made music at St John’s during Sunday prayers passes away UNFINISHED NOTES: The pipe organ at St John’s Church that Johnny Purty used to play. (Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya)
Calcutta:
The sonorous ebb and flow of pipe organ notes won’t fill St John’s Church this Friday. Johnny Purty, the dreadlocked wizard of the keys whose music churchgoers say elevated the soul, died on Tuesday aged 57.
Johnny had been an unmissable presence during Sunday prayers at the church for years, his back to the congregation but his music always upfront in its purpose. On Fridays and Saturdays, he would play almost all day. Over the years, he became as famous as the grand instrument he played.
Noel Ronnie Purty, Johnny’s brother, told Metro on Thursday that his sibling inherited his love of the organ from their father, who had also played the instrument in a church. An alumnus of Assembly of God Church School and St Xavier’s College, Johnny was wedded to music and so remained a bachelor in life.
“He had a cardiac arrest around 3.45pm. A doctor was called and he pronounced Johnny dead,” Noel said.
A memorial service for Johnny was held at Wesleyan Church on Thursday, from where his family and friends proceeded to the Bhowanipore cemetery for the funeral.
“The hall was packed today. He was a master at playing the organ,” said Peter Hyrapiet, a close friend of Johnny.
Johnny Purty on the pipe organ at St John’s Church Picture courtesy: Subhadip Mukherjee
The pipe organ at St John’s Church on Council House Street was installed in the early nineteenth century and remains the grandest in Calcutta. “I have seen Johnny play even when there was none in the church. He used to play the whole day because he loved doing so,” said Subhadip Mukherjee, a friend and member of the Church of North India (CNI) that runs St John’s.
A college teacher who had visited St John’s last winter with her colleagues remembers the warmth with which Johnny greeted them. “He escorted us in. As we went around the church, Johnny started to play the organ. He seemed so happy just playing for us. It’s shocking to hear that he is no more,” she said.
At least five churches in Calcutta have pipe organs but regulars say that the one at St John’s is the grandest in terms of the quality of sound. Johnny’s finesse had as much to do with it as the maintenance that is put in to keep the instrument in shape.
Johnny also played the pipe organ at Wesleyan Church on Sudder Street for two decades. He had been playing there before he first touched the instrument at St John’s.
Unlike a piano, playing the pipe organ requires the use of both hands and feet. “The chords are played using the feet while the lead is played using the hands,” said a church member.
Mukherjee, whose blog Indian Vagabond has a detailed guide to St John’s Church, explained that the instrument has “stops” on either side of the seat that are adjusted to produce the sound the musician desires.
Johnny knew how to adjust these to produce the right music at the right moment, he said.
While a pipe organ player sits with his back to the audience, there is usually a mirror in front that enables the person to see the congregation and play to it.
Johnny’s death means St John’s Church will have to look for a musician to take his seat. “We are looking for a new player as quickly as possible,” said Pradeep Kumar Nanda, the vicar at St John’s.
The church, whose construction started in the late eighteenth century, stands on land gifted by Maharaja Nabo Kishen Bahadur of Sovabazar.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Subhajoy Roy / March 16th, 2018
The Hill Business Summit provided many industrialists with a rare platform to trace their roots to the region and promise projects.
Rudra Chatterjee, the managing director of Luxmi Group which owns the Makaibari tea garden in Kurseong, urged hill residents to keep welcoming investors and tourists.
“The people here are brave, loyal and hardworking. A time comes when a region changes and this is the time. We need to keep coming back, peace must be maintained and we must keep inviting investors to the region,” said Chatterjee.
He promised to open more Makaibari kiosks in the hills to employ the children of garden workers and rolled out plans for a sports and hospitality project.
The boss of Keventer Agro, one of the biggest food processing chains in Bengal that started from Darjeeling, promised to “correct” a gap. “After four decades, we have come back to the birth of Keventer. I don’t know why we never thought of coming to Darjeeling to look into our roots. Keventer has a food-processing unit in every district of Bengal but not in Darjeeling. I am here to correct this,” a nostalgic Mayank Jalan, Keventer’s MD, said
Jalan promised to “figure out” what the firm needs to do in Darjeeling within the next 24 months. Keventer’s in Darjeeling is famous for its breakfast, although the restaurant is no longer associated with Jalan’s company but owned by a local entrepreneur, Robin Jha.
Chandrajit Banerjee, director-general of trade body CII, recounted his family ties with Darjeeling. “It is such a great place to come back after nearly 37 years. It feels special because my grandfather started a business here and my father cultivated it before leaving for Calcutta,” said Banerjee before announcing a series of initiatives that the CII intends to take up in the hills.
For Harsh Neotia, it has been a wait of over a decade. “For the past 13-14 years, I have been visiting north Bengal and I always aspired to do something in Darjeeling. It is one of the most astounding places but for one reason or another, we could not do (invest in projects),” said Neotia.
Neotia’s group is developing two properties, at Ghoom and Makaibari.
“Two hospitality units are coming up at an investment of Rs 150 crore each. The Makaibari project is likely to be completed by 2019 and the first phase of Ghoom by 2020,” said Neotia, who also expressed a desire to explore opportunities in the hills’ education sector.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> West Bengal / by Vivek Chhetri / March 14th, 2018
ISI team develops algorithms that promise higher accuracy than the competition
The automated system developed at ISI looks to be as accurate as Lionel Messi’s left foot when it comes to ball tracking. (AP)
Dunlop:
Advanced algorithms developed by a team of scientists at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta, promise to do for ball tracking in football what tiki-taka has done for FC Barcelona.
Dipti Prasad Mukherjee of the institute’s electronics and communication sciences unit and PhD candidates Saikat Sarkar and Samriddha Sanyal have come out with a high-precision automated system using algorithms that “balance prior constraints continuously against the evidence garnered from sequences of images”.
The system, based on computer vision, aims to track and accurately calculate ball possession by a team during a game. According to Samriddha, it is at least 7.2 per cent better compared to competing approaches to ball tracking.
Samriddha had published a paper titled “On the (soccer) ball” with Mukherjee and Arnab Kundu in 2016.
“The problem of tracking the ball is when there is a sudden change in speed and orientation of the ball,” he said.
In a given video, the prior constraints would be the ball positions in previous frames. The paper proposes a particle filter-based algorithm that tracks the ball when it changes direction suddenly or travels at high speed.
“Our tracking algorithm has shown excellent results even for partial occlusion (blockage), which is a major concern in soccer videos,” Samriddha said.
Tracking a ball when it is being kicked or passed quickly from player to player like in tiki-taka remains a challenge for broadcasters.
Saikat, who is working on calculating ball possession, said: “Till now, the chess-clock method is used to measure ball possession. The other measure for ball possession is to count the number of passes. The ratio of the number of passes by a team divided by the total number of passes in a match closely correlates with ball possession stats.”
FIFA uses data from Deltatre, a sports media company that uses the chess clock method. In the Premier League, ball possession is measured on the basis of data from Opta Sports.
Deltatre has individuals using the three buttons of a chess clock to measure when the ball is with Team A, Team B or not in play. Opta uses a software overlaid on live feeds to track the number of passes.
The team at ISI uses raw broadcast video, measuring ball possession with close to 80 per cent accuracy.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Anasuya Basu / March 14th, 2018
