Lonely at the Top

Think of a lighthouse keeper. Then take away the sea, replacing it with barren hills rolling away to the horizon. Most days, Aneeth Jolly he...

Think of a lighthouse keeper. Then take away the sea, replacing it with barren hills rolling away to the horizon. Most days, Aneeth Jolly hears nothing but the wind. For a man who was raised under the green canopy of a busy centre like Thiruvananthapuram, this is as far from home as he can get.

The General Electric employee who monitors a high-altitude wind farm near Dhule in Maharashtra, works a lonely eight-hour shift. He has no neighbours. The nearest settlement is a hamlet of Kokani tribals who keep away.

A shed with an asbestos roof houses the display units where the electrical engineer spends his time tabulating data on power generation. Contact with the outside world rarely extends beyond a few minutes of wireless talk with clients, who pay to have the turbines up and running.

‘‘Hello…yes, wind speed is 11.8…8654 kw…Okay.’’ End of conversation.

In the three years he has been here, Aneeth has barely picked up a smattering of Marathi, but it’s enough to do his weekly shopping at a small provision store some miles away. ‘‘I spend most of my time sleeping or watching TV… but even the channels here are mostly Marathi or Hindi,’’ says the bachelor.

The only excitement he has known was the time when a few ministers came down to inaugurate the site and were met by a procession of angry villagers who wanted more compensation for land acquired by the government to set up the wind farm.

The project, part of the drive to generate non-polluting energy, is one of 27 sites across the State. The policy allows the private sector to use windmills, which feed into the grid, to generate electricity for their own use and also offers them the right to sell it to a third party.

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Aneeth is having an easy summer because the wind speed is strong enough to ensure that electricity generated far exceeds the minimum guaranteed to his clients. The humid air moving towards land ahead of the south west monsoon makes for a busy period. ‘‘From now on till September, output will increase. Usually, June to September is the time when the turbines produce over 9000 kilowatts everyday.’’

But Aneeth is hoping to soon get a break, when he can return home to spend a few weeks with family. ‘‘It does get lonely here… and I don’t even know the language,’’ shrugs the laconic young man.