KOLKATA: The usual Park Street scenes on a new year's eve, with thousands jostling for space strolling, driving, and partying on the 1.5km stretch, was missing on Sunday night. Crowds which reached Park Street earlier in the day chose to move on to other spots later.
Cops were ready with elaborate plans, including double-lane channels for pedestrians, barricading 2.5m on both sides of Park Street through the day. There were 2,500 personnel under the leadership of 10 divisional commissioners posted around Park Street. But there was a comparatively thinner crowd than last year.
Several factors were being cited as the reasons for this. According to several people who had been to Park Street before, they chose to avoid it this year since several localities in their vicinity were hosting their own new year's eve celebrations, which were equally attractive. Police said better traffic and crowd management this year led to steady dispersal of people, which did not lead to crowding. And all these coincided with a slight uptick in Covid cases. Several Park Street goers were also seen wearing masks.
While eateries in the area were packed since afternoon, the footfall at the city's party street started picking up around 7.45pm. Popular restaurants and pubs, like Olypub, Mocambo, Peter Cat, as well as Flurys, had long queues. But unlike on Christmas eve, the police did not shut down vehicle movement on Park Street.
In the evening, the stretch outside Allen Park and Park Hotel was a sea of heads and hawkers made brisk business selling accessories, like the red Santa hats, devil's horns, headbands and dazzling eyeglasses and eye masks.
Jadavpur resident Chandrani Basu, who had gone to Park Street with friends, said she wanted to walk under the lights and take selfies and have a light dinner at Park Street before hitting a nightclub. "It's a tradition for us to come to Park Street on new year's eve and I didn't want to miss it this time," Basu said.
Subhrangshu Roy Chowdhury had come down from Konnagar with his wife and their four-year-old son.
"We came to Kolkata early on Sunday and had a great time at Science City before we came to Maidan and then to Park Street. We plan to head over to a friend's place at night for a terrace party," said Roy Chowdhury, who works at a jewellery shop. Sujata Goon from Barrackpore said, "We had a great time walking down Park Street till 8pm. At night, we drove to Eco Park where we had a night-long year-end party with friends."
Pratyusha Chakraborty and her gang of friends had planned to walk around Park Street till late evening. But as the crowd started building, the group headed to a friend's place where they planned to party till late in the night.
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