by Indra Sinha
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‘Lily, I am going to send you some pages. They’re a spool of a telephone conversation I had with someone. Like yours in that they need a bit of decoding. Promise to read them?’
She says, ‘Why not send me a copy of the tape?’
But I can’t. During the long conversation, the batteries in the recorder started running low. Now, when the tape is played back, our voices come out gabbling and squeaky. It’s unsettling, hearing those terrible stories narrated by Donald and Mickey.
Conversation with Don – part II
Bear: When you were taking risks, risking your life, to get pictures, did you hope that . . . um . . . that you know, people would see and get stirred up and do something to stop these . . . ?
Don: I thought . . . you know, in a way it was the justification of me intruding on some of those fearful scenes because when you think about it, who needs to have a ringside seat at a murder? Who needs to have the best seat in the house for a murder? Only the killers. Not me . . . not the witness. I used to get rid of my guilt by saying ‘I am doing this to show people what they can’t see.’ I never used to send my film back to England by air freight like a lot of photographers. Only once when I came out of Cambodia and I was directed to go to the fall of Saigon. I couldn’t take that film with me. That’s the only time I air freighted any of that most urgent kind of film back to London. When I’d taken my pictures I used to hold the film as if I was carrying nitroglycerin. I just wouldn’t let it out of my hands. It was against my breast and I . . . you know, it was so important to get those images and those terrible statements back to England. And I felt that by being there I had every right in the world . . . um . . . when I got back to London, you know, in the office at The Sunday Times we used to pore over it and look for the most awful kind of statements, visual statements so that we weren’t going to give the readers a free ride by being too . . . um . . . selective . . .
Bear: When you came back the pictures were printed . . . but there was never . . . because it was . . . um . . . in the context of a news report . . . there would never be any kind of exhortation for the reader to do anything. No-one would say, hey you can do something about this. Because the papers aren’t there for that, people must get that for themselves.
Don: That’s right. But sadly when you go into your attic and you fish out some of these old colour magazines as I often do, and look at what I’ve done it all looks rather like a veneer, that’s . . . faded because it’s been up in the attic. It’s kind of faded like newspapers, they go yellow and faded and that’s what our memories become, our minds become.
Bear: Do you feel that those people that died have also become faded and less real . . .
Don: Not to me . . .
Bear: Your pictures caused shockwaves but when you came back, with your head filled with terrible sights, did it make a bigger impact to talk directly to people?
Don: I got angry when I came back because . . . talking about dinner parties . . . cos earlier when you said the word ‘dinner parties’ it immediately kind of toffs everything up a bit, you know, it bumps it up into some middle class, upper class, thing . . . but when I came back and people used to say to me, ‘Where have you been?’ I’d mumble like Vietnam or Biafra or Beirut and they’d say ‘Oh, it must have been awful.’ And they’d ask you a question and . . . and sometimes when I would come out with a really appalling account they would all look around and say things like ‘Is there any more coffee?’ or ‘Is there any more wine?’ you know, they would try to get away from me . . .
Bear: So would you get angry or what would you say?
Don: I would want to say ‘piss off’ and just walk away . . . I’ve seen every form of . . . of barbarian behaviour that . . . that . . . that . . . monsters can offer. I have seen it all. If someone doesn’t take my word for it I might begin to think I’m, you know... I’ve been living in a fantasy world or something or an unreal kind of world. I feel, you know, maybe what I’ve seen isn’t true, maybe I’m telling lies or . . .
Bear: Well, you’ve got the pictures, haven’t you, to prove it?
Don: I know, but if people don’t believe what I say, um, I always think I’m going slightly potty . . .
Bear: I think that image of the pictures fading away up in the attic is infinitely sad . . . Do you ever think about the people who died, whom you actually saw die or photographed, all those bodies?
Don: I see them on buses and trains and aeroplanes and at airports. I feel as if they’re floating out there in . . . cloudy images. I see them when I least need to see them. I can recall them the way we have these . . . um . . . um . . . videos. I can stop them and start them and replay them and everything because I . . . you know, I feel as if I scripted them . . .
Bear: That’s like cyberspace... it’s an idea for a movie . . .
Don: Yeah, I think if you look in my book . . . um . . . on the back of my book, Martin Amis said I was like a ghostly film director that floats in and out, you know. And in a way, I’m not lifting Martin’s words but I’m just saying I mean . . . as I’m sitting here now looking at the most . . . the most blossom-drenched garden with all kinds of like, you know, things on the lawn, there’s a beautiful bird going across the lawn, sometimes I see foxes and deer . . . I can see that vision while I’m talking to you, of those men dropping in that stairwell in Beirut . . . And it’s a bloody nuisance.
Bear: And what do the dead want, do you think, when they appear inconveniently on buses and in crowds?
Don: I think they may be saying, ‘You didn’t do your job properly because you know, we’re still here and our numbers are growing.’ But I think, to be honest, Bear, I’m suffering the old conscience and um, you know, it makes me feel very inadequate . . . People used to ask do you think it paid off, doing all those things? and I would often say, ‘No, I don’t think it does,’ because after all these years people are still dying in . . . in . . . in all kinds of places in the world. So, you know, I’m surrounded with, with ghosts and images and things tapping me on the brain saying ‘Hey do you remember me?’ . . . ‘Don, do you remember me in the market place in Saigon when they bought the two jeeps at dawn and stood me at a stake?’ ‘Remember me, the man they said was a bomber?’ ‘Remember me? I was the headless corpse by the river restaurant one night when that bomb went off and there was a pregnant woman dead on . . . and right . . . and there were headless people under the tables?’ ‘Don, remember me? The man with the sucking wound in my neck and chest that was making that terrible noise.’
Bear: You keep telling me you can’t write, yet as you speak it’s very powerful . . . We have been talking here over the phone, if you had to speak to the readers directly, what would you say? I mean, you have a chance right now to speak directly to all the people who are reading this, all these people who may have seen your pictures? What do you say to them?
Sathyu
‘Mr Bear, I have got your name from the internet. One person in New York and another in San Francisco told me of your work with the Kurds. So I have come to ask if you will help us.’
We are sitting under the rose bush, where Zek and Misha had been a couple of years earlier. But sitting opposite us now is a man with dark eyes who looks like an Indian Jesus.
He takes a cassette from his pocket and puts it on the table.
‘This recording was made in 1984 by a music fan who was trying to tape a concert. By accident he ended up capturing the sounds of the greatest industrial tragedy in history. Bhopal has been called the Hiroshima of the chemical industry.’
In his quiet voice he tells us the story.
About midnight, on the night of 2nd December 1984, there was an explosion at the pesticide factory owned by Union Carbide. Water got into a tank containing a large quantity of a poisonous chemical, methyl isocyanate. The reaction generated a blast of heat, the liquid gasefied and the resulting explosion ruptured the tank. The factory’s safety systems were not working properl
y. The water cooling hoses were not long enough to reach the tank. The scrubber was broken. The emergency siren had been turned off, because it used to sound so often, it was considered a nuisance. Cyanates and cyanides began billowing from the tank. The wind took the gas and drifted it into the streets and alleys. The neighbourhoods around the factory were densely crowded shanty-towns. Most houses were made of mud brick, bamboo, jute sacking. The lanes between them were barely four feet wide. In these places lived the poorest people in Bhopal, who earned their living as coolies, carrying heavy loads, driving rickshaws, or doing eye-straining zari needlework.
Inside the houses, people were sleeping. They woke with their eyes burning, and the breath caught in their throats. There was a sting in the air, as if people were burning chillies. One girl who lived near a house where there was a cobra’s nest thought that the owners must be trying to drive the snakes away. In a different part of town, a mother told her children that a spice warehouse, which was full of chillies, had caught fire. The gas kept getting thicker and thicker, with a smell like rotten potatoes. It was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. People in the alleys outside were shouting ‘bhago, bhago’ (‘Run, run’).
Smoke started to fill everywhere. People couldn’t see anything. Parents were desperate to protect their children, but they did not know what to do. Half an hour had passed, but there was still no warning from Union Carbide. Some families huddled under their quilts and hoped the terror would pass. Others wanted to run. People became afraid that they were going to die. From all sides, through the thin walls, people were crying and wailing. ‘Bhagwan, hamari raksha karo. Prabhu, hamari jaan baksho.’ (God, take care of us. Lord, save our lives.) They kept on and on praying ‘Allah miah hame bacha lijiye, Allah miah hame bacha lijiye.’ (Dear God, please save us, Lord, please save us.) But the gas just grew thicker. By now, there was so much smoke that people were becoming dim shapes. The street lamps were dim candles. A woman held her small grandson to her chest to shield him. His face was swollen to twice normal size and his eyes were puffed tight. The general commotion outside was growing. The woman slumped, still clutching the baby. Her daughters-in-law sprinkled water on her face and did their best to get her dressed. One of them took her by the hand, the others took the hands of their small children. The family abandoned their house.
They stepped into a crowd of people stampeding in terror through the narrow alley. The press of bodies was so great that at times they were lifted off the ground and carried along. The force of the human torrent tore the children from their mothers. On all sides people were calling out the names of family members. They tried to look for them, but the fog had become impenetrable. It was so dense and searing that people were almost blind. A small boy, Sunil, remembered hearing his mother call out his name and then she was gone and he never saw her again.
People were gasping as they ran. The more they gasped, the deeper they drew the gas into their lungs. It burned the delicate lung linings, it bleached their eyes and hit their nervous systems like a jolt of high voltage. People lost control of their bodies. They were running and throwing up with piss and shit running down their legs. They fell and did not get up. A man lay convulsing in a puddle. Some choked to death on their own vomit. Others began to asphyxiate, as the linings of their lungs bled, and drowned in their own fluids. The streets were full of blistered corpses. At the railway station, a tribe of gypsies had been camped. Not a single one was left to say who they were, or how many they had been.
They woke Union Carbide’s factory manager at 1.30 a.m. when gas was still pouring from the tank. But the company did not issue a warning until 3 a.m. By 4.30 a.m. the manager was in his office, telling the Navbharat Times that the gas could not have come from his factory, because his safety measures were the best in India. The reporter was by struck by the way he sat with his chair tilted back and his hands clasped behind his head. A Carbide officer told The Free Press Journal, ‘Nothing has happened. Can’t you see us alive?’ A hundred yards away, dead bodies lay outside the factory gates.
The boy, Sunil, who had lost his mother, woke to find his feet on fire. He was under a pile of corpses, being cremated. At the muslim burial ground, a man was scooping a shallow hole with his hands. He laid his baby daughter in the grave and covered her up. But, unable to bear the thought of never seeing her again, he brushed the earth off her face for a last look.
‘Bhalu-bhai, Eve-behan, [Brother Bear, Sister Eve]’, says Sathyu, ‘The worst scandal of all is not that it happened. It is not the fact that when doctors asked how to treat the dying, Carbide refused to disclose the information. It is not that the factory was built in a crowded neighbourhood. Nor that safety standards, which were already inadequate, had been further reduced by cost-cutting on orders from America. It isn’t that their safety training course had been reduced from six months to two weeks. Nor that the siren was turned off, the fire hoses too short, the scrubber not working. It was not that the cooling system was compromised by penny-pinching to save freon gas. Nor that they were prepared to risk people’s lives to save just five hundred rupees, about £10, per month . . .
‘Bhalu-bhai, all these years later, the suffering is still going on. Every month more die. There are children in Bhopal who have never known one day free of pain . . . You may be wondering, why aren’t the medical treatments working? Why don’t they use their compensation to pay for better care? Eve-behan, the compensation, for those who got any at all, works out at less than £3 a month. The finest medical treatment most people have had is aspirin . . .
‘The worst scandal of all is this: that for a day or two in 1984 the liberals of the world were shocked. But then they forgot us and abandoned our poor and injured to the corporate lawyers and the politicians. We have tried governments, courts, newspapers, moral pressure, appeals to justice, compassion, to get help for people who had done nothing to deserve this fate. But if you are utterly poor, utterly wretched, you can expect nothing . . .
‘I read an article once,’ Sathyu says. ‘It seems that there is an Asian gang in London called tooti nung. It means – “broken and naked”. Believe me, I know the feeling . . .’
He touches the cassette. ‘In 1984 this tape began to record the groans and cries of the dying. It is still recording.’
Sathyu’s Orissan chicken
‘YOU ARE OUTSIDE. YOU WILL DIE. DO NOTHING . . .’ From a great distance, these words return to me. Sathyu’s images dissolve in my mind to another town, equally unreal, of broken houses and tumbled masonry, doorways in which lie bodies wrenched by unimaginable agonies, a puddly lane where a woman lies face down in her own reflection . . . I remember the opening words of Vatsyayana’s catalogue of bird cries: ‘At first she’ll utter things like “Mother, I’m dying,” ’ . . .fighting to breathe with fluid rattling in the lungs . . . The tape had started recording in 1984, Orwell’s year, the year the internet came to British universities, the year of the Apple Mac, the year I got lost at the Rollright Stones, the year, even the month, almost the day, that I first stepped into cyberspace . . . I saw Raghu Rai’s terrible, beautiful photograph of the baby’s burial . . . But from that day until this, I have never given Bhopal another thought. Sathyu insists on cooking for Eve and me. We eat in the garden and talk till late under a fading summer sky.
Orissan chicken: Season the chicken with turmeric and salt and put aside. Brown some cumin seeds and coriander seeds, nutmeg (grated), cinnamon, crushed cardamoms, garlic. Make a paste of onions, garlic, ginger and green pepper, add and fry till it’s a little brownish. Put the chicken in. Add coriander powder and turmeric – some chilli if you want – and tomato puree, and fry some more. When nicely brown, add water. Potatoes are optional. You can put them in now. Cover and simmer until ready. Before removing from the heat, sprinkle on some fresh coriander leaves to make it more exciting. In all this, you should be guided by the nose.
Tomato rice: Put oil. Quite a bit of garlic (cut cloves in three, fry till brown), mustard seeds. Grind in
black pepper. Chop in tomatoes. Add the rice, water by volume should be double rice. Salt to taste.
Leaves & Birds (a poem for Bhopal by Raf Atul Hussaini)
Here comes murdering December again,
odd how the cold makes us sweat,
we sweat in fear, as winds turn chill
and the city puts on a familiar air,
the air of that night, the poisoned night
when death’s salesmen fleeced our innocents.
Coughing, shrieking, wailing, screaming,
cries of a city drowning in pain,
some of us were blinded by tears, others
just blinded, each one of us blind
to all the others, jumping over one another’s bodies
in a race with death which death easily won,