Schoolmates Subhranjoy Datta and Sayak Guha, both 23, hadn’t seen each other in two years until Pokemons brought them together on Sunday morning.

The two old boys of South Point met at Madhusudan Mancha in Dhakuria and criss-crossed south Calcutta — from Jadavpur University to South Park Street Cemetery — by car and on foot looking for cute animated virtual creatures called Pokemons and places called Pokestops.

Subhranjoy and Sayak are part of the growing tribe of participants in the augmented reality mobile game called Pokemon Go that has become a craze worldwide since its launch last week. 

The game has not been launched officially in India yet but can be downloaded from apkpure.com. Played on iOS and Android devices, it allows players to track virtual Pokemons around a city, capture and even battle others using them. 
With GPS on the phone turned on, the game not only tracks the player’s movement on a map but also indicates when a Pokemon or Pokestop, where freebies can be collected, or Gyms, where they can engage in battle, are nearby. 

The mobile game is geared to bring to life the world of fantasy inhabited by anyone who grew up on a staple of the hugely successful anime series Pokemon.

Pokestops in Calcutta are spread across the city, including in and around Madhusudan Mancha, Rabindra Sarobar, Babubagan, Jodhpur Park and Golpark. Pokemon hunters say there are quite a few at Jadavpur University, Nandan and Minto Park. In the north, the Diamond Plaza shopping mall and Sodepur station are two of the many Pokestops. 
Scores of young Calcuttans swept by the craze have hit the road, eyes glued to their mobile phone screens, looking at the map for the location of the nearest Pokemon.

For the gamers, playing the game is a way of reliving a childhood passion common to many kids who grew up with a childhood dream of owning Pokemons, training them and winning battles using them.

What is more, there are fringe benefits to hunting for Pokemons. Many have discovered parts of the city they had never visited before, couch potatoes have walked kilometres, and friends and siblings have learnt to share high-speed mobile data! 

On Sunday, Subhranjoy’s malfunctioning phone was missing a high-speed network; so he took along sibling Siddhanta, eight-and-a-half years his junior, on the Pokemon mission to share his speedier mobile data using Wi-fi hotspot technology. 

Since Siddhanta is a big Pokemon fan himself, he found no reason to complain. “We had never spent so much time together before! The experience was fun. We discussed strategies as we went along collecting Pidgey and Doduos that came our way,” he said.

For Subhranjoy, playing Pokemon Go with school friend Sayak was like revisiting their childhood. “Sayak and I decided to play the game together because both of us used to like Pokemon a lot in school and would discuss the episodes we watched on TV,” recalled the young man, a resident of Selimpur who has just graduated from St. Xavier’s College.
Sayak, who is set to join TCS next month, and Subhranjoy were scouring the area around Madhusudan Mancha for Pokemons when Siddhanta suddenly screamed: “I have got a Rattata! I have got a Rattata!” 

The two older boys scurried to capture the Pokemon, just as Siddhanta had done.

The scene repeated itself time and again throughout the trio’s travels within the city — one of the boys locating the prized catch and the others playing catch-up.

For Sayak, the biggest takeaway from their Sunday toil for Pokemons was the time spent at the South Park Street Cemetery, a place he had always wanted to visit, especially after reading Satyajit Ray’s Feluda story Gorosthane Sabdhan.

To spread the word about Pokemon Go and discuss the game, some enthusiasts have even formed WhatsApp groups. Sayak is the admin for one comprising his college and school acquaintances, already boasting 38 members.

Nostalgia apart, augmented reality is what makes Pokemon Go click. Once you track a Pokemon — footprints indicating its presence lessen in number as you approach it — and turn on the phone camera, you actually see the Pokemon on screen, as if it were alive and sitting or flying around.

Gariahat resident Adipto Mitra, who has recently joined his family’s restaurant business, found a Doduo on his Pokemon mission and was mightily excited. The two-headed avian Pokemon was sitting on a grave in the Lower Circular Road graveyard.

Adipto, a common friend of Subhranjoy and Sayak, was also at Jadavpur University hunting for Pokemons. When he heard that the duo’s next two stops would be the two graveyards diagonally opposite each other at Mullickbazar, he decided to tag along in the hope of finding some ghost Pokemons.

While common Pokemons like Pidgey and Rattata are being found at many places around the city, a rarer one like the Horsea has been spotted at Dhakshinapan and Magikarp near a water body at Jadavpur.

Ghost Pokemon Ghastly was picked up near Michael Madhusudan’s statue at the Lower Circular Road cemetery recently. 
Players can “evolve” Pokemons during the course of the game and also hatch eggs that they collect from Pokestops to get new Pokemons. After reaching Level Five of the game, they can join a team (red, blue or yellow) and look for Gyms where they can fight other Pokemon trainers.

One Pokemon at a time reigns at a particular Gym. The Gym assumes the colour of that particular gamer’s team. The colour changes if someone else visits the site and hurls his or her Pokemon at the reigning Pokemon as a challenge. If the challenger wins, the Gym assumes the colour of that team.

“In south Calcutta, someone called Abhik88 playing for the red team is doing splendidly. He has placed his Pokemons at many of the Gyms,” Sayak said.

The aim of the players is to capture as many Gyms for their teams as possible and graduate to the higher levels of the game.

Pokemon Go also promotes walking, something that many hope will help them lose some weight — after all, to hatch just one egg a player has to walk 5km!

“The app recognises a walk by setting a speed limit of 20kmph on your movement. I was reading somewhere that people were driving slowly in Australia to cheat the app!” Subhranjoy said.

Businessman and Pokemon Go addict Kunal Vasa, 25, said he had started walking to his gym instead of driving. “I even walked to Nandan to be able to collect more Pokemons.”

Have you played Pokemon Go? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com