Confined to hotel rooms, Bowbazar residents miss festive feel this Puja

KOLKATA: Around 150 residents may have returned to their homes at disaster-hit Bowbazar area, but several continue to live in hotels. They will be spending the Pujas cooped up in 10x12 feet rooms.


Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation ( KMRC ), implementing agency of the East-West Metro project, has managed to take back residents of 10 of the 14 houses declared habitable by the technical committee of experts and KMC-listed structural engineers to their homes.

The four houses on Syakra Para Lane are still without water connection because KMC apprehends contamination in the water line — these buildings are closer to the epicentre of the tunneling disaster on August 31.

The structures are among the 70-odd buildings damaged after the machine boring one of the twin tunnels hit an aquifer, resulting in largescale subsidence. More than 700 people were evacuated from their houses at Durga Pithuri Lane, Syakra Para Lane and Gour De Lane and accommodated in hotels.

Among the displaced were the Mullicks of 2/1B Syakra Para Lane. On the morning of September 25, they had packed their bags to return home, but found that the house was still in a bad shape. The family then returned to hotel Embassy. Tania Mullick, who works at Genpact, said, “Our ground floor is in such a bad shape that we can’t live on the top floor, with the nagging fear that the house might collapse. So we came back. We won’t go back unless the house is safe.”

What are their Puja plans? “Nothing,” rued Tania. “It’s impossible to get the festive feel from the hotel room. The only pandal we will visit is the one in our locality — at Syakra Para Lane,” she said.

Biswanath Barui, resident of 3 Gour De Lane, will be participating in the Syakra Lane Puja, too. But he’s a happier man. “I never imagined that we would be able to return before the Pujas. We are grateful to KMRC for bringing us back home,” the 44-year-old insurance employee told TOI.

Sixty others have now been shifted out of the hotels to rented flats. Among them is Sudipto Seal, whose house at 14 Durga Pithuri Lane was the last to collapse earlier this week. Seal and his family are now living at a 2BHK Kankurgachhi flat. Seal said, “We will be visiting our Syakra Para Lane Puja, with which I have been associated for the last 35 years.”