In the days of air waves dominated by television, here is a contrarian tale of human solidarity not many may have heard of.

      When the deadly ‘Thane’ tropical cyclone hit the Puducherry-North Tamil Nadu coast recently, it was the supposedly old-fashioned All India Radio (AIR) that stood as the only beacon amid the storm.

       Planning meticulously on the Met Office’s warnings that ‘Thane’ will hit the coast around 2:30 am that day, Sanjay Ghosh, veteran AIR correspondent in Puducheery, led a five-member team for a live radio broadcast from the beach.

      The union territory’s AIR station stocked itself in advance with enough diesel to run its power generators all through, anticipating the Authorities totally snapping power supply before ‘Thane’s landfall.

      When entire Puducherry was in pitch darkness and the police had cordoned off the sea-front, Ghosh, braving the pounding rains, the tidal waves and the cyclone’s “scary whistling sound”, was right there with his mobile phone to give a blow-by-blow account of the unfolding drama and the emergency operations of the disaster management group when radio was the only source of information to the people. 

       Even Chief Minister N Rangasamy tracked the cyclone with the live news on AIR from ‘ground zero’.

|||||| Thank you for your interest.||||||