One day in the autumn of 1998, Dilip and Padmini received a visit from a pesticide salesman they had never seen before. He was wearing a blue linen coverall with a badge on it. Padmini, who thanks to Sister Felicity had learned to read, had no difficulty in making out the name on the badge. It was that of one of the giants of the world’s chemical industry.
“I’m a Monsanto rep,” he declared, “and I’ve come to give you a present.”
With these words, the man took out of his motorized three-wheeler a small bagful of black seeds that he proceeded to place in Dilip’s hands. “These soya seeds have been specially modified,” he explained. “They contain proteins that enable them to defend themselves against all kinds of insects, including caterpillars …” Seeing that his audience was wide-eyed with interest, the man seized his opportunity: “I can also offer you sweet pepper seeds that are immunized against plant lice, alfalfa seeds treated against diseases affecting cows, sweet potatoes that …”
Their benefactor had brought the Indian peasant couple a whole catalog of miraculous products. All the same, there was nothing charitable about his visit. It was the result of a marketing campaign thought up some thirteen thousand miles away, in California, where Monsanto, leader in the latest biotechnical revolution, had its headquarters. Thirty years after Eduardo Muñoz and his Sevin, it was Monsanto’s turn to take an interest in the Indian market.
Padmini took the bag of seeds and went and placed them on the small altar with its image of the god Jagannath she had set up in the entrance to the hut, just next to a tulsi tree. Dilip and she would wait for the end of the monsoon to plant the little black granules. Of course, neither of them was aware that these marvelous little seeds had been genetically engineered not to reproduce. The soya beans they harvested would not supply the seeds for another crop. As to the health risks this transgenic engineering might represent, neither the Monsanto sales representative nor his new customers would even begin to think about them. Wasn’t India the perfect place for a new generation of sorcerer’s apprentices to conduct their experiments? If everything the salesman had told them was true, Padmini and Dilip were quite sure that their lives were going to change forever. They could burn incense to thank their god, for the future belonged to them.
What Became of Them
WARREN ANDERSON—Chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the tragedy, he left the company in 1986 and retired to Vero Beach, Florida. Following complaints filed against him by the victims’ organizations and an Interpol warrant, he moved from his last home address and his whereabouts are not publicly known.
SHYAM BABU—The restaurateur who had promised to “feed the whole city” and who supplied the wood for the cremations, still presides over the till in his restaurant. His business has expanded with the opening of a four-story hotel above the Agarwa Poori Bhandar. At thirty rupees a room, Shyam Babu’s rates are still unbeatable.
SAJDA BANO—The widow of Mohammed Ashraf, the beautiful factory’s first victim, is yet to receive compensation for her husband’s death. She is fighting to collect what is still due to her for the death of her eldest son Arshad. Soeb, the younger son, is suffering from serious neurological and other disorders as a consequence of the catastrophe. Both live on the ground floor of a small cottage next to the “widows’ colony.” Sajda Bano and Soeb are treated in the Sambhavna institute that houses the gynecology clinic set up by Dominique Lapierre.
JOHN LUKE COUVARAS—The engineer whose wife was massaged by eunuchs, has nostalgic memories of those splendid days when he helped to build the beautiful plant. He is now living in Greece but dreams of building a house on the sacred banks of the Narmada River, near Bhopal.
SUMAN DEY—The operator on duty in the MIC control room on the night of December 2, 1984, set up a motorbikes workshop with the severance pay he received from Carbide. His unit is on the verge of closing down owing to business losses.
SHARDA DIWEDI—The managing director of the power station that supplied the lighting for the weddings on the fateful night retired and lives in Bhopal. He suffers from chronic shortness of breath, which he attributes to his efforts to save the guests at the wedding of his niece Rinu, whose marriage could only be celebrated several days after the catastrophe. Ten years later, her husband died of a cancer that the Diwedis see as a consequence of poisoning by the toxic cloud. As for Rinu, she suffers from recurrent bouts of depression. The catastrophe destroyed her life.
RANJIT DUTTA—The Indian engineer who, along with Eduardo Muñoz, built the first Sevin formulation factory and who tried, four months before the accident, to alert his superiors to the dilapidated state of the plant, retired to Bhopal. He works as a pesticide consultant for several chemical manufacturers.
DR. DEEPAK GANDHE—The doctor on duty at Hamidia Hospital on the night of the disaster left Bhopal to open a practice in the small town of Khandwa, on the route to Bombay. He devotes part of his time to humanitarian work in the poor areas of Bihar.
RAJKUMAR KESWANI—The Cassandra who predicted the catastrophe in his newspaper now works as a reporter for a New Delhi television network. He did not profit from the far-sighted articles that for a while made him India’s most famous journalist.
REHMAN KHAN—The poetry-loving factory worker, who became an instrument of destiny, still lives in Bhopal. He works for Madhya Pradesh’s forestry department.
COLONEL GURCHARAN SINGH KANUJA—The Sikh officer whose family was murdered while returning from a pilgrimage to Amritsar, and who, on the night of the disaster, saved hundreds of inhabitants of the poor neighborhoods near the Carbide factory from the gas, is now living in Jaipur. Ever since the fateful night, he has had breathing difficulties and is gradually losing his sight. In 1996, he tried to obtain financial assistance from Carbide to go to the United States for an eye operation that Indian specialists are unable to perform. Despondent at the prospect of becoming completely blind, this hero of that tragic night is still waiting for a response.
PROFESSOR N.P. MISHRA—The dean of the medical college who roused all the faculty students from their beds, telephoned all Madhya Pradesh’s pharmacists and arranged for emergency aid, is still Bhopal’s leading medical authority. He sees patients in his superb villa in Shamla Hills, plastered with diplomas and distinctions awarded by medical institutions all over the world. A notice displays the price of a consultation: one hundred and fifty rupees, approximately three dollars.
JAGANNATHAN MUKUND—Following the closure of the Kali Grounds plant, the factory’s last works manager left Bhopal to live in Bombay where, for several years, he went on working for Union Carbide. He retired to Karnataka, a southern state. He is still under indictment by an Indian court to stand trial for his role in the tragedy.
EDUARDO MUÑOZ—After running Union Carbide’s agricultural products division for several years, the flamboyant Argentinian engineer who fathered the Bhopal factory, moved to San Francisco where he now sells wine refrigeration cabinets.
PADMINI NADAR AND HER HUSBAND DILIP—see the Epilogue.
KAMAL PAREEK—The Indian engineer who left his beautiful plant because he could not bear to see its safety standards declining, now lives in New Delhi where he works as an independent consultant to the chemical industry.
SHEKIL QURESHI—The Muslim supervisor who was the last to leave the factory on the night of the catastrophe now runs a factory for production of alum used in purifying water. He is suffering from serious respiratory aftereffects. Like Mukund, he too is under indictment to stand trial for his role in the tragedy.
GANGA RAM—The leprosy and gas survivor has his small house-painting business running again. The Bhopal municipal government gave the occupants of Orya Bustee a plot of land less than a mile north of the Kali Grounds. The community settled there and has reconstructed a small, typically Orya village with mud huts decorated with geometric designs. Dalima is still very active, although she complains more and more about the effects of the severe fractures to her legs.
DR. SARKAR—The h
eroic doctor of the Railway Colony was found at death’s door in the stationmaster’s office. Since then he has suffered from a chronic cough and frequent attacks of suffocation. For years, he was convinced that pockets of gas left behind by the toxic cloud were still poisoning people. He retired in Bhopal, where he lives surrounded by his children.
DR. ASHU SATPATHY—The rose enthusiast and pathologist, who performed the first autopsies on the victims on the night of the tragedy, is now head of the department of forensic medicine at the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal. He still grows roses, which he sends to all the Indian flower shows. Affected by the gases that had impregnated the clothing on the corpses, he now suffers from breathing difficulties. Because he did not live in the area hit by the toxic cloud, he never received any compensation.
V.K. SHERMA—The courageous deputy stationmaster who saved hundreds of passengers by making the Gorakhpur Express leave the Bhopal station, now lives in the suburbs of Bhopal. His injuries have turned him into an almost total invalid. His breathing is so labored that he can scarcely speak. The slightest physical effort causes terrible attacks of suffocation. The government paid him 35,000 rupees, a little over $740.
ARJUN SINGH—The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, who dispensed property deeds to the occupants of the poor neighborhoods bordering on the Union Carbide factory, won the elections in February 1985 and became one of India’s most powerful politicians. Appointed vice president of the Congress party by Rajiv Gandhi, he was made a central government minister several times. He has lost his seat in the New Delhi parliament. He now divides his time between the capital and Bhopal where he has had a sumptuous residence built on the shores of the Upper Lake.
MOHAN LAL VARMA—The operator, accused of sabotage by Union Carbide, was never charged. Today he lives some sixty miles from Bhopal and works for Madhya Pradesh’s industries department.
WARREN WOOMER—The American engineer who supervised the training of the beautiful plant’s Indian engineers at Institute, is now living with his wife Betty in South Charleston. His house overlooks the Kanawha Valley. When Woomer goes out for a walk, he can see the outline of the Institute factory, where the tanks invariably contain several dozen tons of methyl isocyanate. Woomer has just written a history of Union Carbide’s industrial presence at Institute. He has remained a consultant for the factory, which now belongs to the Franco-German chemical company Aventis.
“All That Is Not Given Is Lost”
Solidarity Work that Dominique Lapierre
has Undertaken in Calcutta, Rural Bengal,
Ganges Delta, Madras and Bhopal
Thanks to royalties and my fees as a writer, journalist and lecturer, and thanks to the generosity of my readers and friends who support the organization I founded in 1982, it has been possible to initiate or maintain the following humanitarian work:
1. The assumption of complete and continuing financial responsibility for taking care, at the Udayan-Resurrection home in Barrachpore near Calcutta, of three hundred young boys and girls who have suffered from leprosy.
2. The assumption of total and continuing financial responsibility for 125 handicapped children in the Mohitnagar and Maria Basti homes, near Jalpaiguri.
3. The construction and equipment of the Backwabari home for severely mentally and physically disabled children.
4. The extension and reorganization of the Ekprantanagar home in a destitute suburb of Calcutta, which provides shelter for 140 children of seasonal workers at the brick kilns. The installation of a source of clean drinking water has transformed the living conditions in this home.
5. The creation of a school near the Ekprantanagar home to educate both the 140 children who live there and 350 very poor children from the nearby slums.
6. The reconstruction of several hundred huts for families who have lost everything in the cyclones that have hit the Ganges Delta.
7. The assumption of total financial responsibility for the Banghar SHIS medical center and its program to eradicate tuberculosis, which reaches out to more than two thousand villages. (Program staff holds nearly 100,000 consultations annually.) The installation of X-ray equipment in the main dispensary and the creation of several subsidiary medical centers and mobile units providing diagnostic X-rays, vaccinations, medical treatment and nutritional care.
8. The establishment of four medical units in the isolated villages of the Ganges Delta, which provide vaccinations, treatment for tuberculosis, programs in preventative medicine, patient education and family planning, as well as “eye camps” to restore sight to patients with cataracts.
9. The sinking of tube wells for drinking water and the construction of latrines in several hundred villages in the Ganges Delta.
10. The launching of four floating dispensary-boats in the Ganges Delta to bring medical aid to the one million isolated inhabitants of fifty-four islands.
11. In Belari, the assumption of financial responsibility for a rural medical center that serves more than 90,000 patients a year from hamlets devoid of any medical care; the construction and assumption of responsibility for the ABC center for physically and mentally handicapped children; the construction of a village for 100 destitute or abandoned mothers and children; with a home where mentally sick women are taken care of.
12. The creation of several schools and medical (allopathic and homeopathic) in two particularly poverty-stricken slums on the outskirts of Calcutta.
13. The construction of a “City of Joy” village to house homeless tribal families.
14. The installation of solar-powered water pumps in ten very poor villages in the states of Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan and Orissa, to enable the inhabitants to grow their crops even in the dry season.
15. The assumption of financial responsibility for a job-training workshop for leprosy sufferers in Orissa.
16. The provision of medicines as well as 70,000 high-protein meals for the children who live at the Udayan Resurrection home.
17. Various undertakings for the underprivileged and leprosy patients in the state of Mysore; abandoned children in Bombay, in Palsunda, near Bangladesh and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; as well as the occupants of a village in Guinea, Africa, and abandoned and seriously ill children in a hospital in Lublin, Poland.
18. The creation and financing of a gynecology clinic in Bhopal to treat underprivileged women who are survivors and victims of the 1984 chemical disaster. The purchase of a colposcope to detect and treat cervical cancers.
19. The dispatching of emergency teams and aid to victims of the terrible floods in Orissa and Bengal; an ongoing program to house thousands of families who lost everything.
20. Since 1998, the assumption of financial responsibility for part of Pierre Ceyrac’s education program for 25,000 children in the Madras region.
How You Can Help to Continue the
Work among Some of the World’s Most
Underprivileged Men, Women and Children
Because of lack of resources, the association Action Aid for Lepers’ Children in Calcutta, which I founded in 1982, can no longer meet all the urgent needs, which the various Indian organizations that we have been supporting for the last twenty years, have to provide for.
In order to continue financing the homes, schools, clinics and development programs run by the admirable men and women who have devoted their lives to serving the poorest of the poor, we need to find fresh support.
We have, furthermore, an ongoing serious worry. What would happen if tomorrow we were to have an accident or if illness were to prevent us from meeting the budgets for the centers that depend on us?
There is only one way to address this danger, and that is to turn our association into a foundation.
The capital from this foundation would have to be able to provide the annual revenue necessary to finance the various humanitarian projects that we support. To generate the 500,000 dollars needed each year, we would need an initial capital sum of at least 10 million dollars.
How are we to raise
that sort of capital if not through the contributions of a multitude of individuals?
Ten million is ten thousand times a thousand dollars. For some people it is relatively easy to give a thousand dollars to a good cause. Some people could probably give even more.
But for the vast majority of friends who have already spontaneously given us a donation after reading The City of Joy, Beyond Love or A Thousand Suns or after hearing one of my talks and who often faithfully keep up their generous support, it is much too large a sum.
One thousand dollars, however, is also twice five hundred dollars or four times two hundred and fifty, or five times two hundred dollars, or ten times a hundred dollars, or even a hundred times ten dollars.
Such a sum can be raised from several people at one person’s initiative. By photocopying this message, by spreading the word, by joining with other family members, friends or colleagues, by setting up a chain of compassion and sharing, anyone can help to keep this world alive and bring a little justice and love to the poorest of the poor. Alone we can do nothing, but together all things are possible.
The smallest gifts count for just as much as the largest. Isn’t the ocean made up of drops of water?
A big thank you in advance from the bottom of my heart, for everyone’s support, whatever their means.
P.S. We would like to remind readers that the association Action Aid for the Lepers’ Children in Calcutta has no administration costs. The totality of the money from the authors’ royalties and of the donations received from readers is sent to the centers for which it is donated.
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal Page 33