‘Such calamites can come again... need to be ready’

Septuagenarian SP Gon Choudhury and his wife Swapna, 69, live in their own house in east Kolkata with two domestic helps. Their son, an engineer, lives in London while their daughter, a doctor, lives in Australia.

Choudhury, a former government employee is a renewable energy expert and received the Green Oscar award in 2003. And thus, at a time when Madurdaha, a residential neighbourhood in east Kolkata plunged into darkness as Cylcone Amphan tore into Bengal and Bangladesh’s coastlines and high tension electric wires snapped at grid supply sites, Choudhury’s house enjoyed uninterrupted power supply.

Choudhury installed a rooftop solar panel in 2018, which produces 1 kilowatt of power when the sun shines — enough to operate a small pump to fill the overhead tank in emergency, apart from running lights, fans and even charge mobile phones. The Choudhurys use a combination of solar power and grid.

On the day the cyclone made landfall,

Choudhury said that his children kept calling him and his wife to check on them. “My son and daughter were concerned as it was a huge cyclone and mobile networks were down.”

The cyclone devastated large parts of the Sunderbans, and the city of Kolkata, and left millions homeless and 86 dead.

“Kolkata being a cyclone prone city, such calamities would come again. Every house should explore this option of becoming self-reliant,” Choudhury, who has served as a United Nations expert, said.