And this fella pulled it through from a powerless home

To live in a house that has no power can be arduous in itself. But when a boy from this very building studies his way to bag the second rank in both CET and COMED-K exams, the story is probably one of much more than simply resilience, perseverance and grit. But Sucheth S Kunchem of Chandra Layout has done just that.

Sucheth studied under solar lamps and using torches, all because of a civic agency goof-up that left the family groping in the dark. The culprit essentially is a high tension wire that passes through their compound.

When Sucheth’s father Suresh Prabhu started construction of the house, the civic regulation was that the roofs of houses should be at least four metres below such wires.

Yet, by the time the construction could be completed, the new regulation spoke of a five-and-half metre cut-off height. The house was denied power, and the family was told that this would remain so till the first floor of the house was demolished. Since then, the travails have been endless: the family has to fill up the overhead tanks manually, and Prabhu has to charge the cellphone at his office.

Sucheth believes he could have fared better still if his house had a power connection. He could, at the most, study for four hours at night, and thus decided not to appear for the JEE exams. He, needless to say, didn’t have access to a computer at home either.

After his son’s achievement, Prabhu had approached the local MLA, who had assured that he would look into the matter. So far, there has been silence from that end.