Five Past Midnight in Bhopal

by Dominique Lapierre; Javier Moro

  One of these joys came from an unexpected source. Every morning, Padmini’s mother and her neighbors would take up their positions along the railway line to wait for the arrival of the Punjab Express. On their heads they carried buckets, bowls and basins. As soon as the train stopped, they would rush to the engine.

  “May the great god bless you!” they would call out in a chorus to the engineer. “Will you turn on your tap for us?”

  If he was kindly disposed, the driver would undo the valve on his boiler and fill their containers with a few gallons of a commodity to which few of Bhopal’s poor had access: hot water.

  7

  An American Valley That Ruled the World

  Dilip had an eye for these things. He saw at once that the hut built by Ratna Nadar and his family would never survive the onslaughts of the monsoon.

  “You should double the roof supports,” he advised Padmini.

  The little girl gave a gesture of helplessness.

  “We haven’t even the money to buy incense sticks for the god,” she sighed. “It’s three days since Grandpa and Grandma have eaten. They refuse to sacrifice the parrot.”

  Dilip took a five-rupee note out of his shorts.

  “There,” he said, “that’s an advance on our next treasure hunt along the railway track. Your father will be able to buy two bamboo poles.”

  That same year, on the other side of the world, in a lush valley in West Virginia, a team of Union Carbide engineers and workmen were putting in the girders for a new factory destined to be the multinational’s flagship. The Kanawha Valley had long served as a fief of the company with the blue-and-white logo. Curiously enough, it owed its nickname of “Magic Valley” to the most ordinary of resources: its salt beds. With reserves of almost a billion tons, the area had attracted people and animals since prehistoric times. Salt had made wild animals carve pathways through the forest to the saline pools along the river. It had sent Indians along the same routes in pursuit of game, then provided them with the brine in which to preserve their kill. In the seventeenth century, it had drawn a few intrepid explorers to an otherwise inhospitable region, for white gold was not the magic valley’s only trump. The ancient forests that covered it had provided the material necessary to build houses, as well as boats and barges in which to transport the salt, carts, bridges and mill wheels. An entire lumber industry had grown up along the Kanawha. Connecting directly with the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the river gave the valley’s merchandise and travelers access to the center and the south of the country.

  At the beginning of the first world war, the valley was also found to contain prodigious energy resources. The discovery of oil, coal and natural gas had precipitated the Kanawha into the world of the chemical industry. The 1920s had seen the region’s woodlands replaced by forests of metal chimneys, towers, flares, reservoirs, platforms, and pipe and tube work. These new factories belonged to giants like Du Pont de Nemours, Monsanto and Union Carbide. It was there, on its Institute site, and in its research center a few miles away from the peaceful little town of South Charleston, that Carbide’s chemical engineers had come up with the innumerable innovative products that were to transform the lives of millions. Turning chemistry into the Mr. Fix-it of everyday life, they had helped to revolutionize products as varied as fertilizers, medicines, textiles, detergents, paints, film … The list was endless but, because the chemical industry is not quite like any other, the revolution had its price. Many of the substances that go into these workaday goods are as dangerous as the radiation produced by the nuclear industry. Ethylene oxide, involved in the manufacture of automobile antifreeze, is potentially as deadly as plutonium dust. Phosgene, one of the components currently used in the production of fertilizers, killed thousands of World War I soldiers. Hydrogen cyanide, a gas with a pleasant almond smell and used in medicines, was adopted by a number of American prisons to execute those condemned to death. In its Kanawha Valley factories, Carbide alone produced two hundred chemical substances, many of which, like chloroform, acrylonitrile, benzene and vinyl chloride, are known or suspected carcinogens.

  Like its competitors, Carbide devoted substantial sums to maintaining the safety of its staff and a strict policy of environmental safeguards. Chemical companies operating in the Kanawha Valley did not hesitate to award themselves certificates of good conduct, even as their toxic wastes were insidiously poisoning the lush countryside. Although their policy to protect the environment was widely reported by complacent medias, it didn’t always keep them out of court. Carbide was fined several times for pouring highly carcinogenic substances into the Kanawha River and the atmosphere. An inquiry conducted in the beginning of the 1970s revealed that the number of cancers diagnosed among the occupants of the valley was 21 percent higher than the national average. The incidences of lung and endocrine cancer, and leukemia in particular, were among the highest in the country. One study carried out by the state of West Virginia’s health department found that people living in areas downwind of the South Charleston and Institute factories presented twice as many cancerous tumors as the national average. Such concerns would not, however, prevent Carbide from constructing on its Institute site a completely innovative factory to facilitate the manufacture of the revolutionary insecticide the company wanted to distribute throughout the world—Sevin.

  This high-tech project modified the procedure that the three researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute had used to invent Sevin. It introduced a chemical process that would both substantially reduce production costs and eliminate waste. The manufacturing process involved making phosgene gas react with another gas called monomethylamine. The reaction of these two gases produced a new molecule, methyl isocyanate. In a second stage the methyl isocyanate was combined with alpha naphthol to produce Sevin. More commonly known by its three initials, MIC, methyl isocyanate is without any doubt one of the most dangerous compounds ever conceived by the sorcerer’s apprentices of the chemical industry. When toxicologists had tested it on rats, the results were so terrifying that the company banned their publication. Other experiments had shown that animals exposed to MIC vapors alone died almost instantaneously. Once inhaled, MIC destroys the respiratory system with lightning speed, causes irreversible blindness and burns the pigment of the skin.

  German toxicologists had dared to conduct further tests by subjecting voluntary human guinea pigs to minute doses of MIC. Although disapproved of by the scientific community, these experiments did make it possible to determine the threshold of tolerance of exposure to MIC, in the same way that the level of tolerance to nuclear radiation had been established. The research was all the more helpful because thousands of workers making synthetic foam products, such as insulation paneling, mattresses and car seats, found themselves in daily contact with other isocyanates, cousins of MIC. Thanks to its new factory, Carbide could conceivably sell MIC to all those manufacturers who used isocyanates, but who were reluctant to take on the dangers involved in their production. Most important of all, with a more affordable supply, the American company could consider selling Sevin all over the world.

  8

  A Little Mouse under the Seats of Bhopal’s Trains

  THE BHOPAL TEA HOUSE. There was something faintly comical about the sign. Its faded letters were displayed across the facade of a booth made out of planks, and stood opposite the entrance to Orya Bustee. There, amid the nauseating smell of frying fat, the traditional sweet tea with milk, millet flour fritters, minced chilies and onions, rice and dhal, chapatis and other kinds of griddle cakes were served. Its main trade, however, was in “country liquor,” or bangla, a local rotgut made out of fermented animal intestines, of which the teahouse sold gallons every day. A notice in English warned clients that the establishment did not give credit: YOU EAT, YOU DRINK, YOU PAY, YOU GO. The proprietor, a potbellied Sikh with bushy eyebrows, rarely showed himself. Although he was an important local figure, forty-five-year-old Pulpul Singh made his presence felt elsewhere. As the local moneylender f
or the three bustees, he practiced his trade from behind the heavy metal grilles of his two-story modern house at the entrance to Chola. Enthroned like a Buddha in front of his Godrej-stamped safe and two immense chromos of the Golden Temple of Amritsar and a portrait of Guru Nanak, the venerable founder of the Sikh community, Pulpul Singh exploited the economic misfortunes of the poor. To recover his debts, he had hired a convict on the run from a Punjabi prison. With a filthy turban on his head and his dagger ever at the ready, this villain was the terror of small borrowers. He had the protection of the police, whom he bribed on behalf of his master. So hated was he that his master could no longer allow him to run his drinks stall. Instead he employed the man most respected by the local people, Belram Mukkadam, whose walking stick had marked out the site for all the residents’ huts.

  Founder of the Committee for Mutual Aid, which combated injustice and fought to relieve the worst cases of distress, Mukkadam was a legend in his own lifetime. For thirty years he had battled ceaselessly with corrupt officials, shady politicians, property agents and all those who wanted to get rid of the ghettos on the belt of land north of town. Because of him the date August 18, 1978, would become famous in the history of Bhopal. On that day, Mukkadam would lead two thousand poverty-stricken people to invade the local parliament and demand the cancellation of an eviction operation planned for the next day. He would encourage the poor to hold their heads high to strengthen their spirit of resistance, and he gathered around him men united regardless of religion, caste or background, who formed a sort of informal government for the bustees.

  Despite the fact that a yawning divide separated this local hero from the sordid activities of his employer, Mukkadam had agreed to take on the management of the Bhopal Tea House because it provided him with a forum. Around its handful of tables reeking with alcohol, people could publicly discuss their affairs and better organize their response to any imminent danger.

  The little girl bounded toward the disheveled looking man who had just appeared at the end of the alleyway, staggering like a drunk.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” she cried as she ran toward her father.

  Clearly, he had stopped at Belram Mukkadam’s teahouse. Although he was not a drinker, Padmini’s father had downed a few glasses of country liquor. It was an indication that something serious had happened. Padmini threw herself at his feet.

  “The railway work is finished.” Ratna Nadar spoke with difficulty. “They’ve thrown us out.”

  On that winter’s day more than three hundred coolies had suffered the same fate. There were no employment laws to protect temporary workers. They could be laid off at any time without notice or indemnity. For the Nadars, as for all the other families, it was a terrible blow.

  “My father tried desperately to find another job,” Padmini would recount. “Every morning, he would set off in the direction of Berasia Road in the hope of meeting a tharagar who would take him on for a few hours or a few days to pull carts or carry materials. But there wasn’t any building work going on that winter. Once again our stomachs began to rumble.”

  One evening when the whole family was preparing to go to bed without food, Sheela surprised them. She lined up all their bowls on the beaten earth floor and filled them with a glutinous gruel, generously sprinkled with aromatic curry powder.

  “Be careful not to swallow the little bones,” she cautioned.

  They all understood what she was saying. She had cooked the parrot.

  The next morning, Padmini saw Dilip in the doorway to her lodging.

  “Come with me and I promise you no one in your hut will ever go hungry again,” he declared.

  The little girl surveyed the boy’s torn clothes with concern. His shorts and shirt were stained with blood.

  “Where do you want to take me?” she asked, worried.

  Dilip pointed to the amulet he wore around his neck. “Don’t be frightened. With this we won’t be in any danger.”

  They walked along the railway line in the direction of the station. On the way, Dilip stopped at a pile of garbage and began to scratch furiously at it.

  “Look, Padmini!” he exclaimed, brandishing two small brushes he had just unearthed. “These’ll earn you lots of rupees.”

  At the station Dilip met up with the members of his gang.

  “Hi there, boss!” called out one of the urchins, who was also armed with a small brush.

  “No luck, the Delhi train’s late,” announced another boy.

  “And the one from Bombay?” asked Dilip.

  “Not announced yet,” replied a third who was wearing a little Muslim round cap on his head. The gang members belonged to all different faiths.

  Dilip introduced Padmini to his companions who nodded their heads in admiration.

  “With such a pretty mouse, we’re bound to make a fortune!” laughed the eldest.

  The sound of a whistle cut short their conversation and spurred the small group to activity. Dilip dragged Padmini along by the hand and into the line to the other platform. The man who had blown the whistle was an inspector with the railway police. He and another policeman were about to launch themselves after the gang when Dilip raised his arm.

  “I’m coming!” he called out.

  Clambering over the rails with feline agility, he joined the policemen. Padmini saw her friend slip a bill discreetly into the inspector’s hand. Such bribery was standard practice. As the young man completed his transaction, the Delhi train arrived. The gang members spread themselves along the platform, dividing the various cars between them. Dilip pushed Padmini toward the first open door. He pointed out to her the rows of seats onto which the passengers were piling.

  “Get down on all fours, crawl along with your brush, and pick up anything you can find,” he told her. “But hurry up! We have to get off at the next stop to come back to Bhopal!”

  Padmini sneaked under the first row of seats, working as frantically as if she were prospecting for gold. Between the feet of one of the passengers, she noticed a piece of chapati. “I was so hungry I lunged at it and swallowed it,” she admitted. “Luckily people had also thrown away some banana skins and orange peels.” The little sweeper quickly gathered all this and more. At the first stop, she and her gang took an inventory of their findings.

  “Guess what I’ve got in my hands,” she cried, holding her closed palm in front of the boy’s eyes.

  “A diamond the size of a cork!”

  “Idiot!” laughed Padmini, opening her hand to reveal two small five-paisa coins. “I’ll be able to buy my father two bidis.”

  “Well done!” said Dilip with obvious excitement. He took from his waist a sock, a used battery, a sandal and a newspaper cone full of peanuts. “I’ll sell all this to my usual ragpicker. He should give me three or four rupees.”

  That evening Dalima’s son brought his young accomplice a ten-rupee note. He had generously rounded up the amount he had received from the ragpicker.

  Padmini caressed the note for a long moment. Then she sighed, “We’re saved.”

  Soon Padmini had her favorite trains and knew all their conductors. Some of them would give her a rupee or two and sometimes a biscuit when they came across her during one of her sweeps. But there were also the big dadas* in Bhopal station. Always out for a fight, they would try and take whatever the sweepers had collected. They were in cahoots with the police and if Dilip did not give them ten or twenty rupees, out came their clubs.

  “Often they would manage to snatch our entire day’s takings,” Padmini would say. “Then I would go home empty-handed and my mother and brother Gopal would start crying. Sometimes when the trains were running late, I would spend the night with Dilip and his gang in the station. When it was very cold, Dilip would light a fire on the platform. We would lie down next to the flames to sleep until the next train came through. There were times too when we slept in other stations, at Nagpur, Itarsi or Indore, waiting for a train to take us back to Bhopal.”

  It was in one of thes
e stations that one night Dilip and his companions would lose their little Adivasi sister.

  9

  A Poison That Smelled Like Boiled Cabbage

  FATAL IF INHALED! Displayed on labels marked with a skull and crossbones, posters and printed pages in user manuals, the warning was directed at the manufacturers, transporters and users of MIC. The molecule was so volatile that its combination with only a few drops of water or a few ounces of metal dust would prompt an uncontrollably violent reaction. No safety system, no matter how sophisticated, would then be able to stop it from emitting a fatal cloud into the atmosphere. To prevent explosion, MIC had to be kept permanently at a temperature near 0° C. Provision had to be made for the refrigeration of any drums or tanks that were to hold it. Any plant that was going to carry stocks of it needed to be equipped with decontamination apparatus and flares to neutralize or burn it in case of accidental leakage.

  Not surprisingly, the transportation of methyl isocyanate was subject to extraordinary safety precautions. Union Carbide’s internal guidelines, applicable worldwide, required delivery truck drivers to “avoid congested routes, bypass towns and cities, and stop as infrequently as possible.” In case of a sudden burning sensation in the eyes, they were to rush to the nearest telephone box and dial the four letters HELP, followed by 744-34-85, Carbide’s emergency number. They were then to evacuate their vehicle to “an unoccupied area.”