Kolkata halts in alarm as a hidden tremor shatters the morning calm

A sudden shiver ran through Kolkata on Friday morning, breaking the city’s usual rhythm and leaving a trail of startled faces in its wake. At around 10:10 am, strong, unexpected tremors rippled across the metropolis and its neighbouring districts, sending people spilling out of homes, offices, malls and schools in a surge of instinctive fear.

For a few fleeting seconds — brief yet haunting — the ground seemed to move beneath their feet, drawing thousands into open spaces where confusion mingled with disbelief.

The German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) later traced the disturbance to a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in Bangladesh, radiating from a shallow depth of just 10 km. While Indian authorities have yet to issue their official assessment, the tremors that rolled across Kolkata bore the unmistakable signature of this cross-border jolt.

Phones lit up almost instantly. Networks hummed with frantic messages, calls and hastily recorded videos as residents tried to unravel what had just happened. Traffic slowed, elevators emptied, and familiar neighbourhoods fell eerily still, the moment dredging up memories of past quakes that had shaken the region’s confidence.

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) also located the quake in Bangladesh, its seismic waves sweeping across the plains before brushing Kolkata with enough force to sway high-rises, rattle apartment blocks and murmur uneasily through the city’s old architectural relics. Early estimates place the tremor’s length at 15–20 seconds — a passing moment, yet forceful enough for many to describe it as “sharp” and “unnervingly sudden”.

No serious damage or casualties have been reported, but officials have urged vigilance, cautioning residents about possible aftershocks and advising them to steer clear of compromised structures until inspections are complete. Meanwhile, social media filled with images of oscillating ceiling fans, trembling windowpanes and hurried evacuations — brief glimpses of a city abruptly shaken from routine.

What began as an ordinary Friday morning transformed, in an instant, into a quiet reminder of the subcontinent’s seismic fragility — a transient tremor that left Kolkata’s skyline untouched, yet stirred the nerves of those who felt the earth quiver beneath them.