The story of Charu Maa is one of a courageous woman picking up the pieces after a devastating natural calamity turned her world upside down. No one had predicted the severity of the super cyclone that struck Odisha in 1999. The Indian Met department had been sending out periodic warnings, sure, but who could have foreseen wind speeds that reached 260 km/hr, for instance?

The sort of destruction that the storm left in its wake led to 1.6 million homes across 14,000 villages being razed to the ground and around 9,000 people — some unofficial estimates have pegged this figure at 30,000 — being declared dead. Life in the eastern state was paralysed for over six months. And lakhs of farmers lost their livelihood overnight, saline water rendering their plantations infertile.