140-hour wait after 40 years with CESC... During the septuagenarian's tenure, the longest duration of power failure was of two nights and three days in the early 1970s

Subir Mukhopadhyay (centre) in his verandah Telegraph picture

Arkamoy Datta Majumdar, TT, 27.05.20, Calcutta: : Subir Mukhopadhyay has been waiting for a CESC team to arrive ever since Cyclone Amphan knocked off power at his home at Sarsuna in Behala on May 20. 

The wait crossed 140 hours on Tuesday evening.

“What I keep hearing from others is that they will come. But that they have not come is evident because power supply has not been restored in our locality,” Subir, who served the CESC for 40 years, told The Telegraph.

It is difficult for Subir, who had an open-heart surgery a few years ago and who suffered a brain stroke last June, to survive without electricity. The septuagenarian was sitting in a chair on the ground-floor verandah of his two-storey house while speaking to this newspaper.

Subir’s son Sudipto Mukhopadhyay said his father spent most of the time in the verandah as he could not bear the heat inside their home on the southern fringes of Calcutta.

“He had asked us not to worry because he believed the CESC was well-equipped to handle any emergency. But when power supply was not restored on Friday, he got restless. He asked me to take him to Victoria House (the CESC headquarters) because he wanted to offer his assistance to the engineers there,” Sudipto said.

Subir retired from the CESC as an assistant engineer Grade 2 in 2008.

“When the Nimtala burning ghat became an electric crematorium, I was in charge,” Subir recalled with pride.

The very next moment his face fell when reminded of his own ordeal for the past week.

During his tenure, the longest duration of power failure was of two nights and three days in the early 1970s.

“During my initial days, once there was a massive frequency dip in the Eastern Grid. The West Bengal State Electricity Board and the Damodar Valley Corporation took major blows and went into shutdown. They didn’t have the minimum power to restart generation. It was CESC that came to their rescue,” Subir said.

The CESC had successfully avoided the dip and supplied power to other utilities to revive generation.

“Some people in our locality also hit the streets. They went to the local police station. After all this, the corporation restored water supply in the area on Sunday. But there is no sign of electricity,” Sudipto said on Tuesday evening.

The family has come to know that power supply has been reinstated in some adjacent areas.

Speaking from his experience, Subir said that it was possible to draw power from a nearby functional transformer if the one supplying power to his locality was not working.

“They could have easily drawn a parallel line from the nearby transformer and temporarily provided power to us till the one in our locality was replaced,” he added.

It pains him to see how CESC employees are being heckled when they are going to fix snapped power lines. This is the result of the power utility losing its touch with its consumers, he felt.

“We used to maintain cordial public relations. Our ears were to the ground and we could feel what the people want. I believe that is missing now,” the former CESC employee said.