Five Past Midnight in Bhopal

by Dominique Lapierre; Javier Moro

  One hour later, the sixteen drums marked with the skull and crossbones sign were loaded aboard the two trucks. An agonizing journey was about to begin. Caught up in the chaos of tongas, * rickshaws, buffalo carts, sacred elephants, other animals of all kinds and overloaded trucks, the two big rigs and Pareek and Qureshi’s white Ambassador car set out on the road to Bhopal. “Every rut, every time a horn sounded, every acrobatic overtaking of a vehicle, every railway crossing, made us jump,” Shekil Qureshi remembered.

  “Have you had any dealings with MIC before?” Pareek suddenly asked his companion who was fervently muttering prayers.

  “Yes, once. A sparkling liquid in a bottle. It looked just like mineral water.” At this idea the two men broke into a slightly strained laughter. “In any case,” Qureshi went on, “it was so clear, so transparent, you’d never have thought you had only to inhale a few drops for it to kill you.”

  Pareek directed the driver to pass the two trucks and stop a little farther on. The sun was so hot that he was worried. “Our cans mustn’t start to boil.”

  The two men were well aware that the boiling point of methyl isocyanate is 39° C. They also knew that the result could be catastrophic.

  Qureshi put his head out of the window. A blast of burning air hit him in the face. “I bet it’s at least forty degrees, possibly even forty-five.”

  Pareek grimaced and signaled to the driver of the front truck to stop. The two men at once rushed over to cover the drums with heavy isothermic tarpaulins. Then they took the extinguishers out of their holders. In case of danger a jet of carbonic foam could lower the temperature of a drum by a few degrees.

  “But we didn’t harbor too many illusions,” the engineer later admitted.

  For thirty-eight hours, the two intrepid Carbide employees acted as sheepdogs, with their Ambassador car sometimes in front of, and sometimes following, the two trucks. They had been given explicit instructions: their convoy was to stop before entering any inhabited area to allow time to fetch a police escort. “You could read the extreme curiosity on the local people’s faces at the sight of these two trucks surrounded by police officers,” Pareek would recall. “‘What can they possibly be transporting under their tarpaulins to justify that sort of protection?’ people must have been wondering.”

  That first high-risk convoy was to be followed by dozens of others. Over the next six years, hundreds of thousands of gallons of the deadly liquid were to traverse the villages and countryside of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The day came in May 1980 when, to the delight of all the staff, especially those who had to supervise the trips, the chemical reactors of Bhopal’s brand new plant produced their first gallons of methyl isocyanate. They were dispatched into three huge tanks, which would soon store enough MIC to poison half the city.

  The city that had withstood invasions, sieges and the bloodiest of political plots, was in the throes of succumbing to the charms of a foreign chemical giant. Eduardo Muñoz could rejoice; Carbide was going to achieve by peaceful means what no one else had managed in three centuries: the conquering of Bhopal. To the crescents on its mosques, the linga of its Hindu temples and the crosses on its Christian churches, the capital of Madhya Pradesh now added a profane emblem that was to forever alter its destiny: the blue-and-white logo of a pesticide plant.

  “That prestigious symbol would contribute to the advent of a privileged class of workers,” Kamal Pareek would explain. “Whether you were employed at the very top of the hierarchy or as the humblest of operators, to work for Carbide was to belong to a caste apart. We were known as the ‘sahibs.’ ”

  At Carbide, an engineer earned twice as much as a top official in the Indian administration. This meant he could enjoy a house, a car, several servants and travel in first-class, air-conditioned trains. What counted most, however, was the prestige of belonging to a universally recognized multinational. Social status plays as crucial a role in India as anywhere else. “When people read on my business card: ‘Kamal Pareek—Union Carbide India Limited,’ all doors were opened,” the engineer recalled.

  Everyone dreamed of having a family member or an acquaintance employed by the company. Those who had that good fortune were quick to sing its praises.

  “Unlike Indian companies, Carbide did not dictate what you should do with your salary,” a Carbide manager explained. “It was American liberty overlaying an Indian environment.”

  For V.N. Singh, the son of an illiterate peasant from Uttar Pradesh, the envelope stamped with the blue-and-white logo that the postman delivered to him one morning “was like a message from the god Krishna falling from the sky.” The letter inside informed the young mathematics graduate that Carbide was offering him a position as an operator trainee in its phosgene unit. The boy scrambled across the fields as fast as his legs would carry him to take the news to his father. When they heard the news, his neighbors came running. Soon the entire village had formed a circle around the fortunate chosen one and his father. Both were too moved to utter a sound. Then a voice shouted: “Union Carbide ki jai! Long live Union Carbide!” All the villagers joined in the invocation, as if the entry of one of their own into the service of the American company were a benediction for all the occupants of the village.

  As for Shekil Qureshi, the Muslim who had taken part in the dangerous transportation of the drums from Bombay to Bhopal, joining Carbide as a supervisor trainee brought him a sumptuous marriage at the Taj ul-Masajid, the great mosque built by Begum Shah Jahan. Dressed in a glittering sherwani, a long tunic of gilded brocade, his feet shod in slippers encrusted with precious stones, his arm entwined with the traditional band inscribed with prayers soliciting the protection of Allah for him and his wife, a red silk Rajasthani turban on his head, the young chemistry graduate from Saifia College proudly advanced toward the mihrab* of the mosque, “dreaming of the linen coverall with the blue-and-white logo that was, as far as he was concerned, the finest possible attire.”

  Such was the prestige conferred by a job with Carbide that families from all over came to Bhopal to find husbands for their daughters. One morning, sensing his end was near, Yusuf Bano, a cloth merchant in Kanpur, put his eighteen-year-old daughter Sajda on the express train to Bhopal with the secret intention of having her meet the son of a distant cousin, who was working in the phosgene unit on the Kali Grounds. “My cousin, Mohammed Ashraf was a handsome boy with a thick black mustache and a laughing mouth,” the woman later recalled. “I liked him at once. All his workmates and even the director of the factory came to our wedding. They gave us a very amusing present. My husband was moved to tears: two Union Carbide helmets with our first names interlaced in gilded lettering.”

  For the twenty-six-year-old mechanical engineer Arvind Shrivastava, who was part of the first team recruited by Muñoz, “Carbide wasn’t just a place to work. It was a culture, too. The theatrical evenings, the entertainment, the games, the family picnics beside the waters of the Narmada, were as important to the life of the company as the production of carbon monoxide or phosgene.”

  The management constantly urged its workers to “break up the monotonous routine of factory life,” by creating cultural interest and recreational clubs. In an India where the humblest sweeper is brought up on historical and mythological epics, the result exceeded all expectations. The play entitled Shikari ki bivi put on by the workers from the phosgene unit was a triumph. It exalted the courage of a hunter who sacrificed himself to kill a man-eating tiger. As for the first poetry festival organized by the Muslims working in the formulation unit, it attracted so many participants that the performance had to be extended for three additional nights. Then came a magazine. In it, the operator of the carbon monoxide unit, who was also the editor-in-chief, called upon all employees to send him articles, news items and poems, in short any material that might “introduce ingenious ideas to contribute to everyone’s happiness.”

  These initiatives, which were typically American in inspiration, soon permeated the city itself. The inhab
itants of Bhopal may not have understood the function of the chimneys, tanks and pipework they saw under construction, but they all came rushing to the cricket and volleyball matches the new factory sponsored. Carbide had even set up a highly successful hockey team. As a tribute to the particular family of pesticides to which Sevin belonged, it called its team “the Carbamates.” Nor did Carbide forget the most poverty stricken. On the eve of the Diwali festival, young Padmini saw an official delegation of Carbiders handing out baskets full of sweets, bars of chocolate and cookies. While the children launched themselves at the sweets, other employees went around the huts, distributing what Carbide considered to be a most useful gift in overpopulated India: condoms.

  As for the Americans, who suddenly found themselves parachuted into the heart of India, they often felt as if they had landed on another planet. In the space of twenty-four hours, forty-four-year-old Warren Woomer and his wife Betty had traveled from their peaceful, germ-free West Virginia to the bewildering maelstrom of noises, smells and frenetic activity of the City of the Begums. For the man to whom the company would shortly entrust the command of the Bhopal factory, the adventure was “a real culture shock.”

  “I knew so little about India!” he candidly would admit. “I realized we’d have to adjust our thought processes and way of life to thousand-year-old traditions. How were we going to get our turbaned Sikh employees to wear a helmet while performing dangerous procedures when even the Indian army had given up with that obligation? Before I left South Charleston, I didn’t even know what a Sikh was!”

  For his young compatriot, John Luke Couvaras, who, in his enthusiasm, had likened the Bhopal venture to “a crusade,” “the experience was absolutely unique. I particularly remember the feeling of excitement,” he said, “but India never failed to endear itself to us, sometimes quite comically.”

  In the beginning, employees regularly arrived late to their workstations.

  “Sahib, the buffalo cows had escaped,” one of Couvaras’s workers explained. “I had to run after them to milk them.”

  The American admonished the former peasant gently. “The running of our factory cannot depend on the whims of your cows,” he stated clearly.

  “But after six months, everything was working to order,” admitted Couvaras.

  There were plenty of other surprises in store for the young engineer, starting with the difference in attitude between Hindu and Muslim engineers. “If there was a problem, a Muslim would give you the facts straight and then acknowledge his responsibility. Whereas a Hindu would remain vague and then incriminate fate. We had to adapt ourselves to these differences. Fortunately, after a certain level of education, the goddess of chemistry intervened to put us all, Indians and Americans alike, on the same wavelength.”

  19

  The Lazy Poets’ Circle

  My very dear engineer Young, your presence does us infinite honor. Be so good as to remove your shoes and stretch out on these cushions. Our poetry recital is due to commence in a few moments. While you’re waiting, do quench your thirst with this coconut.”

  Thirty-one-year-old Hugo Young, a mechanical engineer originally from Denver, Colorado, could scarcely believe his eyes. He had suddenly found himself thousands of light-years away from his phosgene reactors, in the vast drawing room of one of Bhopal’s numerous patrician residences. About him, some twenty men of different ages were reclining on silk cushions embroidered with gold and silver, their heads resting on small brocade pillows. By buying these pillows they had acquired the right of entry into the most exclusive men’s club, the Lazy Poets’ Circle. Bhopal might be launching itself into the industrial era, but as one expatriate of the Kanawha Valley testified, it was not going to give up any of its traditions. All the adepts of the Lazy Poets’ Circle continued to observe the very particular laws and rites of their brotherhood. Those reclining were considered to be lazy poets of the first order; those seated were lazy poets of the second order; and those standing were voluntarily depriving themselves of the respect of their peers. This hierarchy of posture entitled the reclining to command the seated and the seated to command the standing. It was a subtle philosophy, which even found its expression in material things. For example, cups and bowls with thick rims were strictly prohibited so members of the Lazy Poets’ Circle would not have to open their lips any wider than necessary when drinking.

  All afternoon, poets, singers and musicians followed one another at the bedsides of the lazy, charming them with couplets and aubades. In the evening, after an army of turbaned servants had served them all kinds of samosas, the brotherhood took the young American to the parade ground in the old town where a poetry festival was being held. That evening, the mushaira had brought together several authors, professional and amateur, who were singing their works to a particularly enthusiastic audience.

  “My friends made a point of translating the ghazals* for me,” Young remembered. “They all evoked tragic destinies, which love saved in the end. As I listened to the voices with their harmonies rising ever higher until they sounded almost like cries for help, I thought with embarrassment of the deadly phosgene I was making in my reactors only a few hundred yards from that prodigious happening.”

  In the course of the evening one of the members of the Lazy Poets’ Circle placed a hand on the young American’s shoulder.

  “Do you know, dear engineer Young, which is the most popular mushaira in Bhopal?” he asked.

  The engineer pretended to think. Then with a mischievous wink, he replied, “The Lazy Poets’, I imagine.”

  “You’re way off, my dear fellow. It’s the mushaira of the municipal police. The chief of police told a journalist one day that it was ‘better to make people cry through the magic of poetry than with tear gas.’ ”

  Indolent, voluptuous, mischievous and always surprising— that was Bhopal. John Luke Couvaras would never forget the spectacle he came across one afternoon in the living room of his villa in Arera Colony. Stretched out on a sofa, his young Canadian wife was being massaged by two exotic creatures with kohlrimmed eyes and heavy black tresses that tumbled to their thighs. The grace of their movements, their delicacy and concentration extracted a string of compliments from the engineer, but the thanks he received in response could have come from the mouths of a pair of longshoremen; the long henna-decorated hands kneading away at his wife’s flesh belonged to two hijras, or eunuchs.

  Less than eight hundred yards from the futuristic complex rising from the Kali Grounds, in old houses washed out by the monsoon, lived a whole community of hijras, a very particular caste in Indian society. They had come to the City of the Begums from every region of India, for festivals and pilgrimages, and they stayed. Three or four hundred eunuchs were reckoned to inhabit Bhopal. They lived in small groups organized around a guru who acted as head of the family. Apart from being talented masseurs, they played an important role in local Hindu society. According to religious tradition, these beings, neither men nor women, had the power to expunge sins committed by newborn babies in their previous lives. Whenever there was a birth, the hijras came running, carrying tambourines coated in red powder for the ceremony of purification. They were always generously remunerated. No one in Bhopal would haggle over the services of the hijras, for fear of incurring their maledictions.

  The expatriates from South Charleston experienced a culture shock that only India could induce. For the thirty-six-year-old bachelor Jack Briley, an alpha naphthol expert, the East and all its charms were embodied in a woman. She was one of the nawab’s nieces. He had met her at a cocktail party in honor of the president of the World Bank. Refined, cultured and liberated—something that was rare in Muslim circles—and gifted with a lively sense of humor, twenty-eight-year-old Selma Jehan was, with her large kohl-rimmed eyes, “the perfect incarnation of a princess out of A Thousand and One Nights of the kind a young American from the banks of the Kanawha River might dream of.” Jack Briley allowed himself to fall easily under her spell. As soon as he could e
scape from the plant, the young Muslim woman showed him the city of her ancestors. As the rules of purdah* ordained, the windows of the old family Ambassador, which she drove herself, were hung with curtains to hide her passengers from others’ sight.

  Selma brought her suitor first to the city palaces, where some members of her family were still living. Most of these once-grand buildings were in a sorry state, with cracked walls, ceilings occupied by bats and grimy furniture.

  Some of these residences housed the survivors of another age. Begum Zia, Selma’s grandmother, lived among her bougainvilleas and her neem and tamarind trees in Shamla Hills. She never failed to show visitors the silver-framed portrait of the first gift she had received from her husband: a sixteen-year-old Abyssinian slave in Turkish trousers with a waistcoat embroidered with gold.

  Briley had the good fortune to be a guest at several receptions held by his young friend’s unusual grandmother. There he met all the town’s uppercrust, people like Dr. Zahir ul-Islam who had just successfully performed Bhopal’s first sex-change operation, or the little man they called “the Pasha,” the town’s gossip. Wearing a wine-colored fez, and a suit of silver brocade, with his eyes made up with kohl, the Pasha spoke English with an Oxford accent. He had lived in England for twenty years but left because he said he felt too Indian there. He found living in India difficult, because he felt too English. Only in Bhopal did he feel at home.

  Another regular at Begum Zia’s soirées was an eccentric old man dressed in rags, known as Enamia. Under his real name, Sahibzada Sikander Mohammed Khan Taj, this obscure, impecunious cousin of the begum had married a Spanish princess. He, too, had spent twenty years in London where he worked in a sausage factory before being dismissed for “unhygienic behavior.” No one had ever tried to find out what lay behind the peculiar charge, but the begum and her friends doted upon old Enamia. A great connoisseur of the city, nothing gave him more pleasure than showing foreign visitors around it in his old Jeep with its defunct shock absorbers. He knew the history of every street, monument and house. Enamia was Bhopal’s memory.