Five Past Midnight In Bhopal Part 15

The task threatened to be impossible, however, because officers from India's Criminal Bureau of Investigation had taken over the inquiry. Their chief, V.N. Shukla, a stiff-necked unsmiling man, began by prohibiting the Americans access to the plant.

Then he told Woomer, "If I catch you, or any of your colleagues, interrogating any of the workmen, I'll throw you in prison."

Worse yet the CBI was also in the process of moving the factory's archives to a secret location. What were the American investigators supposed to do, given that they could not examine the site, question witnesses or refer to such crucial doc.u.ments as reports of procedures carried out on the fatal night? Woomer felt overwhelmed. Especially as the situation was further complicated by the arrival of a team of Indian investigators headed by a leading national scientist, Professor Vardarajan, president of the Indian Academy of Science. How could they cope with this compet.i.tion and the police restrictions? Woomer soon pa.s.sed from feeling overwhelmed to despair.

Once again, however, the good fairy of chemistry came to the rescue of its disciples. One thing upon which they were all in agreement was that before beginning their investigation, they needed to be certain that no further accidents could occur. It was this concern that haunted Woomer. There were still twenty tons of MIC in the second tank and one ton in the third. At any moment, those deadly substances could start to boil and escape in the atmosphere. On this, Americans and Indians were in accord. Should they repair the flare and burn the gases off at alt.i.tude? Should they get the scrubber back in order and decontaminate them with caustic soda? Should they try and decant them into drums and evacuate them to a safe place? In the end it was Woomer who came up with the solution.

"Listen!" he said, in his nonchalant but rea.s.suring voice. "The best way to get rid of the remaining MIC is to use it to make Sevin."

"But how?" asked the Indian professor, stupefied. "By getting the plant running," replied Woomer. "After all, that was what it was built for."

Making Sevin meant cleaning all the pipework, pressurizing the tanks, repairing the faulty stopc.o.c.ks and valves, reactivating the scrubber and the flare, lighting the alpha-naphthol reactor again... . It meant reengaging all the systems of a plant, the wreckage of which had just caused a catastrophe unprecedented in history.

"How long would it take you to attempt such an operation?" asked the Indian professor.

"No more than five or six days," answered Woomer. "And what about the local people? How are they going to react when they hear the factory's going into operation again?"

The American engineer could not answer that question. Someone else was going to do it for him.

45.

"Carbide Has Made Us the Center of the World"

The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh was exultant. Warren Woomer's idea would enable him to erase the memory of his surprising absence on the night of the tragedy and win back his electorate. This time he would be seen right there on the battlefield. To ensure that his heroism paid off, he would need to convince the people of Bhopal that restarting the factory would be extremely dangerous. He therefore promulgated several safety measures with the purpose of creating an atmosphere of panic. He ordered all the schools closed, despite the fact that they were in the middle of exams and most were situated outside the risk zone. Next he called in eight hundred buses to evacuate all those living within a two-and-a-half-mile radius of the factory. Once people were well and truly terrified, he revealed the plan from which he would emerge a great man. He dispatched an army of motorized rickshaws equipped with loudspeakers across the city. The whole of Bhopal then heard, in his steady, rea.s.suring voice, "I have decided to be present in person in the Carbide factory on the day when its engineers start it running again to remove the last drops of any toxic substances. This moment of truth will be a token of your humble servant's dedication to your cause. This is not an act of courage, but an act of faith, and that is why I am calling this challenge to get rid of any residual dangers at the cursed factory, 'Operation Faith.'"

As the fateful day for restarting the factory approached, businesses closed, streets emptied and life came to a halt. The chief minister encouraged the exodus to become a torrential flood. Driven by the fear that he had so adroitly stirred up, people threw themselves into his eight hundred buses and into any other means of transport. They abandoned their homes in buffalo carts, rickshaws, scooters, bicycles, trucks, cars and even on foot. The railway station was taken by storm. Afraid that their homes would be pillaged, people took with them anything they could. One woman left with her nine-month-old goat in her arms. For the oldest Bhopalis, the sight of trains covered with people piled on the roofs, hanging from the doors and steps, brought back sinister memories of India's part.i.tion. "This spontaneous migration," wrote the Times of India, "defies all reason."

The newspaper was right: Bhopal had lost all reason. Yet, as Ganga Ram and Dalima were to find to their astonishment on their return to Orya Bustee, it was not in the place worst affected by the gases that the terror raged most intensely. If anything, the reverse was true. Their neighbors might look like ghosts with their cotton wool pads on their eyes, but they were no longer afraid. Although the deaths of Belram Mukkadam, Rahul, Bablubhai, Ratna Nadar, old Prema Bai and so many others had created an irreparable void in their small community, the joy of being reunited with friends was stronger than the fear of another disaster. The reunions of Ganga and Dalima with Sheela and Gopal, Padmini's mother and brother; with Iqbal, Salar and Ba.s.si, to name but a few, were occasions for celebration. What a joy it was to discover that Padmini was still alive in Hamidia Hospital and that Dilip was with her! What a relief to find one's hut intact when so many others had been looted!

Ganga and Dalima realized at once that the priority for people in their area was not to flee from a fresh threat but to preserve the fragile thread that attached them to the world of the living. Most had been seriously affected by the gases. They were in urgent need of medication. The hospital supplies had been exhausted, so costly treatment would have to be brought in from pharmacies. But with what? Ganga would never forget the sight of his neighbors rushing to the only person now in a position to help them. Since the catastrophe, the moneylender Pulpul Singh's house had been besieged by survivors clutching the deeds for their huts, transistor radios, watches, jewels or anything else they had, in the hope of exchanging them for a few rupees. People jostled with each other outside the fence, threw themselves at the Sikh's feet, pleaded and paid him every conceivable compliment. As impa.s.sive as a Buddha, he made a clean sweep of all that he was offered. His wife and son recorded names, took a thumbprint on the receipts by way of signature and arranged a most unusual array of objects all over their house. Even chickens that had survived the fateful night could bring in a few notes. That evening, a large box carefully wrapped in a blanket also found its way into the moneylender's treasure trove: Ganga Ram had p.a.w.ned his television. With the money he received he would be able to help his neighbors get medicine to relieve their suffering. The magic box that had brought his brothers and sisters so many dreams would have to wait for better days to foster other fantasies.

By December 16, the day of Operation Faith, Bhopal was a ghost town, but television cameras were going to broadcast an event that had become larger than life. Since dawn, fire trucks had been spraying the streets to neutralize any suspect emanations. More than five thousand gas masks had been stored at the city's main crossroads. A cordon of ambulances and fire engines isolated the factory, while several hundred policemen posted at the various gates allowed only those with special permits to pa.s.s. Among them were the chief minister and his wife. They would both be in the front line. Under the photographers' flashes they took their places in the control room, where Shekil Qureshi and his team had been on watch on the night of December 2. Three military helicopters equipped with water tanks and piloted by men in gas masks, circled continuously over the metal structures, ready to intervene should the need arise. "To think that it took the death of thousands of people for our government to finally take an interest in our factory," said one disillusioned workman as he listened to reports of the operation on his transistor.

Warren Woomer was satisfied; the equipment necessary to get things running again had been repaired in record time. At eight o'clock precisely, Jagannathan Mukund, surrounded by a police escort, was able to open the stopc.o.c.k and allow hydrogen to flow into tank 611. A few minutes later, a supervisor announced that the tank had reached the correct pressure, which meant that they could start evacuating the first gallons of the twenty tons of MIC into the reactor to make Sevin. At one P.M., Professor Vardarajan let the chief minister know that one ton of methyl isocyanate had been turned into pesticide.

Arjun Singh was triumphant. Operation Faith had made a totally successful start. Draining the tanks to the last drop of MIC would take three days and three nights. Beaming happily, the intrepid politician clattered down the metal staircase of the beautiful plant with his wife. Already his fellow citizens were preparing to return to their homes. Now he was sure of it: in two months time they would turn out en ma.s.se to vote for him.

"Everyone to the teahouse! There's a sahib there who wants to talk to us!"

Since Rahul's death, young Sunil k.u.mar had taken over as messenger in the alleyways of Orya Bustee. He had lost five of his brothers and sisters, as well as his parents, in the catastrophe. Bhopal had offered scant asylum to the family who had arrived so recently from the blighted countryside. The news he spread from hut to hut that morning brought a throng of survivors to the meeting place.

The ambulance chasers had arrived. They had come from New York, Chicago and even California, people such as the celebrated and formidable San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli, who announced that he was lodging a writ for compensation against Carbide for a mere $15 billion, more than twice the amount of international aid India was to receive that year.

The tragedy made fine pickings for that special breed of American lawyer who lives off other people's misfortunes and specializes in obtaining damages and compensation for the victims of accidents. The four or five hundred thousand Bhopalis affected by the multinational's disaster represented tens, possibly even hundreds, of millions of dollars in various claims for compensation. Under American law, lawyers could collect almost a third of that sum in professional fees, a colossal bounty that transformed the office of Bhopal's mayor and that of the chief minister into battlegrounds for vested interests. Like big game hunters, the Americans fought over clients in the various neighborhoods. The Kali Grounds bustees fell to the representative of a New York law firm. Chaperoned by Omar Pasha, accompanied by an escort of Indian a.s.sociates and two interpreters, forty-two-year-old lawyer Frank Davolta Jr., a half-bald colossus of a man, entered Orya Bustee in a swarm of policemen and reporters. The escorts took up their position around the wobbly teahouse tables. Aides brought baskets full of snacks, sweets and bottles of Campa Cola for the American to hand out. After the horror of the last few days, Orya Bustee was rediscovering an occasion for celebration.

When the first survivors appeared, the American had difficulty in repressing a feeling of nausea. Many of them were blind, others dragged themselves along on sticks or lay sprawled out on stretchers. They all gathered in a semicircle on the sisal mats that had been used for Padmini's wedding feast. The lawyer looked up with incredulity at the source of all this horror. In the winter sunshine, the Carbide plant stood glinting at a stone's throw like one of Calder's mobiles.

Ganga Ram surveyed the sahib with suspicion. This was the first American ever to come into Orya Bustee. Why was he there? What did he want? Was he some envoy from Carbide come to convey the company's apologies? Was he the representative of some sect or religion wanting to say prayers for the dead and those who had survived? It would not be long before the survivors learned the purpose of his visit.

The American lawyer stood up. "Dear friends," he said warmly. "I've come from America to help you. The gas killed people who were dear to you. It ruined the health of those close to you forever, possibly yours, too." He pointed to the factory on the other side of the parade ground. "The Union Carbide company owes you reparation. If you agree to entrust the defense of your interests to me, I will fight for you to receive the highest possible compensation in my country's courts." The lawyer paused to allow his interpreters to translate his words into Hindi, then into Urdu and Orya.

A turbaned man wagged his head, relishing every word. Not for anything in the world would Pulpul Singh have missed this event. He was already contriving ways of diverting this prospective manna into his safe.

Yet the American was surprised at what little reaction his proposal seemed to engender. The faces before him remained set, as if paralyzed. Omar Pasha tried to rea.s.sure him, "Be patient, the gas damaged many of the survivors' mental faculties." This explanation further engaged the lawyer's interest. He decided to question some of the victims. He wanted them to tell him about the dreadful night, to describe the suffering to him. He invited everyone to talk about those they had lost. Sheela Nadar, Iqbal, Dalima and Ganga Ram spoke in turn. Suddenly the ice was broken. Calamity found a face and a voice. Frank Davolta took notes and photographs. He felt his file taking shape, a.s.suming a life, gaining weight. Each testimony moved him a little more. By now, he was breathing so heavily that he had to undo his tie and open his collar. Moved to pity, Dalima came to his rescue. She brought him a gla.s.s of water, which the American downed gratefully. He did not know that the water came from the well in Orya Bustee that had been poisoned by Carbide's waste with lead, mercury, copper and nickel, and that the condemned of the Kali Grounds had been drinking it for twelve years.

While the baskets of snacks were pa.s.sed around, the lawyer resumed his speech. "My friends," he explained, "if you agree to my representing your interests, we must draw up a contract."

Upon these words, an a.s.sistant pa.s.sed him a file full of forms that he brandished at arm's length. "These are powers of attorney," he explained, "authorizing counsel to act in lieu of his client." The residents of Orya Bustee who had never seen such doc.u.ments, got up and thronged around the American's table. Like thousands of other Bhopalis from whom American lawyers extracted signatures that day, they could not make out the words printed on those sheets. They were content just to touch the paper respectfully. Then Ganga Ram's voice rose above the crowd. The former leper asked the question that was on every-one's lips.

"Sahib, how much money will you be able to get for each of us?"

The lawyer's features froze. He paused as if thinking, then blurted out, "No less than a million rupees!"

This unheard of figure struck the a.s.sembly dumb. "A million rupees!" repeated Ganga Ram, unable to hold back his tears.

The television lenses closed in on him as if he were Shashi Kapoor, star of the big screen. Cameras flashed.

"Are you surprised at the sum?" asked one reporter. "No, not really," stammered the former leper. "Why not?" pressed the reporter.

Ganga pointed a fingerless hand at the pack of journalists jostling around him. "Because Carbide has made us the center of the world."

Epilogue.

No one will ever know exactly how many people perished in the catastrophe. Concerned with limiting the amount of compensation that would eventually have to be handed out, the authorities stopped the reckoning quite arbitrarily at 1,754 deaths. Reliable independent organizations recorded at least 8,000 dead for the night of the accident and the two following days.

In fact, a very large number of victims were not accounted for. Among them were many immigrant workers with no fixed address. Sister Felicity and several survivors from the neighborhoods on the Kali Grounds reported having seen army trucks on the morning of December 3 picking up piles of unidentified corpses and taking them away to some unknown destination. Over the next few days, numerous bodies were seen floating on the sacred Narmada River, whose sandy sh.o.r.es had helped to produce the first sacks of Sevin. Some of them drifted as far as the Arabian Sea, more than six hundred miles away; others fell prey to crocodiles.

In the absence of official death certificates, large numbers of corpses were incinerated or buried anonymously. Per the mufti's order, grave digger Abdul Hamid found himself having to bury up to ten Muslims in the same grave. According to the restaurateur Shyam Babu, who supplied the wood for Hindu cremations, more than seven thousand corpses were burned on the Vishram Ghat Trust's five funeral pyres. The Cloth Merchant a.s.sociation, for its part, stated that it had supplied enough material to make at least ten thousand shrouds for the Hindu victims alone.

The authorities contested the accuracy of these figures on the grounds that they exceeded the number of claims filed for compensation. This official reaction did not, however, take into account the fact that in many instances the catastrophe had wiped out whole families and there was no one left to apply for damages. Over four hundred dead, whose photographs remained posted on the walls of Hamidia Hospital and elsewhere for several weeks, were never reclaimed by their families. Number 435 was a young woman with tattoos on her cheeks; 213 was an emaciated old man with long white hair; 611 was an adolescent with a bandaged forehead; 612 a baby only a few months old. Who were these people? We will never know.

Some groups now estimate that the gas from the beautiful plant killed as many as between sixteen and thirty thousand people.

More than half a million Bhopalis suffered from the effects of the toxic cloud, in other words, three in every four inhabitants of the city. * After the eyes and lungs, the organs most affected were the brain, muscles, joints, liver, kidneys and the reproductive, nervous and immune systems. Many of the victims sank into such a state of exhaustion that movement became impossible. Many suffered from cramps, unbearable itching or repeated migraines. In the bustees, women could not light their chulas to cook food without risk of the smoke setting off pulmonary hemorrhaging. Two weeks after the accident, a jaundice epidemic struck thousands of survivors who had lost their immune system defenses. In many instances neurological attacks caused convulsions, paralysis and sometimes coma and death.

More difficult to a.s.sess, but just as severe, were the psychological consequences. In the months that followed the disaster, a new symptom made its appearance. The doctors called it "compensatory neurosis." A number of Bhopalis developed imaginary illnesses, but some neuroses were very real. The most serious psychological effect was ghabrahat, a panic syndrome that plunged patients into a state of uncontrollable anxiety with an accelerated heartbeat, sweating and shaking. Those suffering from it lived in a permanent nightmare state. People with a tendency toward vertigo suddenly saw themselves on the edge of a precipice; those who were frightened of water thought they were drowning. With its a.s.sociated depression, impotence and anorexia, ghabrahat brought desolation to a large number of survivors, sometimes making them view the catastrophe as a divine punishment, or as a curse inflicted on them by some member of their family. Ghabrahat drove many to despair and suicide.

Today Bhopal has some one hundred and fifty thousand people chronically affected by the tragedy, which still kills ten to fifteen patients a month. Breathing difficulties, persistent coughs, ulcerations of the cornea, early-onset cataracts, anorexia, recurrent fevers, burning of the skin, weakness and depression are still manifesting themselves, not to mention constant outbreaks of cancer and tuberculosis. Chronic gynecological disorders such as the absence of menstrual periods or, alternatively, an increase to four or five times a month, are common. Finally, r.e.t.a.r.ded growth has been noted in young people aged between fourteen and eighteen, who look scarcely ten. Because Carbide never revealed the exact composition of the toxic cloud, to this day medical authorities have been unable to come up with an effective course of treatment. Thus far, all treatments have produced only temporary relief. Often overuse of steroids, antibiotics and anxiolytics serves only to exacerbate the damage done by the gases. Today Bhopal has as many hospital beds as a large American city. Without enough qualified doctors and technicians to use and repair the ultramodern equipment, however, the vast hospitals built since the disaster remain largely unused. An inquiry carried out in July 2000 revealed that a quarter of the medicines dispensed by the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust, recently established with Carbide funds, were either harmful or ineffective, and that 7.6 percent were both harmful and ineffective.

So much official negligence has produced a rush of private medical practices. According to victims' advocacy groups, however, two-thirds of these doctors lack the necessary skills. In light of this, several of these groups set up their own care centers such as the Sambhavna Clinic, with which the authors of this book are now a.s.sociated. This unique inst.i.tution, founded by a former engineer (see the Letter to the Reader) by the name of Satinath Sarangi, is staffed by four doctors and some twenty medical and welfare experts. Together, they monitor more than ten thousand economically disadvantaged patients, and see that they all receive effective treatment. The team at Sambhavna Clinic has discovered that certain yoga exercises can dramatically improve chronic respiratory problems. Half the patients thus treated have regained the ability to breathe almost normally and have been able to give up the drugs they had been taking for many years. The clinic also manufactures some sixty plant-based Ayurvedic medicines, which have already enabled hundreds of patients to resume some form of activity-a spectacular achievement that has wrested from poverty some of the fifty thousand men and women once too weak to do manual work.

So many years after the catastrophe, five thousand families in Chola, Shakti Nagar, Jai Prakash Nagar and other bustees are still drinking water from wells polluted by the toxic waste left by the factory. Samples taken by a Greenpeace team in December 1999 from the vicinity of the former installation showed a carbon tetrachloride level 682 times higher than the acceptable maximum, a chloroform level 260 times higher, and a trichloroethylene level 50 times higher.

No court of law ever pa.s.sed judgment on Union Carbide for the crime it committed in Bhopal. Neither the Indian government, claiming to represent the victims, nor the American lawyers who had extracted thousands of powers of attorney from poor people like Ganga Ram, managed to induce a court on the other side of the Atlantic to declare itself competent to try a catastrophe that had occurred outside the United States. One of the American lawyers representing the Indian government had taken young Sunil k.u.mar, one of three survivors of a family of ten, to New York to try and persuade the judge before whom the case had been brought, to agree to try Carbide. It was the ambulance chaser's view that only an American court could require the multinational to pay an amount commensurate to the enormity of the wrong. They sought damages of up to $15 billion. Carbide's defense lawyers argued that an American court was not competent to a.s.sess the value of a human life in the third world. "How can one determine the damage inflicted on people who live in shacks?" asked one member of the legal team. One newspaper took it upon itself to do the arithmetic. "An American life is worth approximately five hundred thousand dollars," wrote the Wall Street Journal. "Taking into account the fact that India's gross national product is 1.7 percent of that of the United States, the court should compensate for the decease of each Indian victim proportionately, that is to say with eight thousand five hundred dollars." * One year after the catastrophe, no substantial help from the multinational had reached the victims, despite the fact that Carbide had given $5 million in emergency aid. It took four long years of haggling before, in the absence of a proper trial, a settlement was drawn up between the American company and the Indian government. In February 1989, Union Carbide offered to pay $470 million in compensation, in full and final settlement and provided the Indian government undertook not to pursue any further legal proceedings against the company or its chairman. This was over six times less than the compensation initially claimed by the Indian government. The lawyers for the government nevertheless accepted the proposal without consulting the victims.

This very favorable settlement from Union Carbide's perspective sent the company's stock up two dollars on Wall Street, a rise that enabled Chairman Warren Anderson to inform his shareholders that in the final a.n.a.lysis, the Bhopal disaster only meant "a loss of forty-three cents a share" to the company. One week after the fateful night, Union Carbide shares had dropped fifteen points, reducing the multinational's value by $600 million.

Most surprising was the psychological shockwave that the disaster triggered throughout every level of the company, from engineers like Warren Woomer or Ranjit Dutta, to ordinary workers, office employees or elevator boys in the various subsidiaries. At the head office in Danbury, secretaries burst into tears over telexes from Bhopal. Engineers, unable to comprehend what could possibly have happened, shut themselves away in their offices to pray. Local psychiatrists had employees of one of the world's largest industrial companies come pouring in, in a pitiful state of depression and bewilderment. Many admitted to having lost confidence in "Carbide's strong corporate ident.i.ty." There were similar reactions in Great Britain, Ghana and Puerto Rico, wherever, in fact, the flag with the blue-and-white logo was flying. Four days after the catastrophe, at midday on December 6, over 110,000 employees at the 700 factories and laboratories stopped work for ten minutes "to express our grief and solidarity with the victims of the accident in Bhopal."

Anderson was so concerned by the crisis in morale of Carbiders the world over that he recorded a series of video messages intended to restore their confidence. These messages featured much discussion of ethics, morality, duty and compa.s.sion. The best way of getting things back on track, however, was still to show that the company was not guilty. On March 15, 1985, the vice president of the agricultural division of the Indian subsidiary, K.S. Kamdar, called a press conference in Bombay to announce that the tragedy had not been due to an accident but to sabotage. Kamdar based his statement on the inquiry carried out by the team of engineers sent to Bhopal the day after the disaster. According to this inquiry, a worker had deliberately introduced a large quant.i.ty of water into the piping connected to the tank full of MIC. This worker, who remained nameless, had supposedly acted out of vengeance after a disagreement with his superiors. To support this theory, the investigators had relied on the discovery of a hose close to tank 610 and, in particular, upon the doctoring of logbook entries made by the shift on duty that night. The report that supposedly incriminated a saboteur made no mention of the fact that none of the factory's safety systems were activated at the time of the accident.

The authors of this book were able to identify and meet the man Union Carbide had accused. They talked to him at length. The man in question is Mohan Lal Varma, the young operator who, on the night of the disaster, identified the smell of MIC while his companions attributed it to an insecticide sprayed in the canteen. It is their deep-seated conviction that this father of three children, who was well aware of the dangers of methyl isocyanate, could not have perpetrated an act to which he himself and a large number of Carbide's workers were likely to fall victim. His colleague T.R. Chouhan, wrote a book called Bhopal-The Inside Story, in which he points out large technical holes in Carbide's sabotage story. Mohan Lal Varma's innocence was, moreover, immediately recognized. No legal proceedings were ever inst.i.tuted against him. Today he lives, quite openly, two hours outside Bhopal. If the survivors of the tragedy had had the slightest suspicion about him, would they not have sought vengeance? As it was, no one in Bhopal or elsewhere took the charge seriously.

Events would further conspire to refute it. Four months after the accident in Bhopal, on March 28, 1985, a methyl oxide leak at the Inst.i.tute site in the United States poisoned eight workers. On the following August 11, another leak, this time from a tank holding aldicarb oxime, injured 135 victims in the Kanawha Valley. One of them was Pamela Nixon, the laboratory a.s.sistant at Saint Francis Hospital in South Charleston, who had noticed the smell of boiled cabbage years before. "I was among those who believed Union Carbide when they claimed that accidents like the one in Bhopal could not occur in America," she told the press when she came out of the hospital. The incident had changed her life. She went back to college and joined the organization People Concerned About MIC, created by residents in her area. After which, armed with a degree in environmental sciences, she set out to take on the executives of the various chemical factories in the Kanawha Valley and compel them to tighten their safety measures. This was something that no one had done in Bhopal. The tragedy was bearing its first positive fruits.

In Bhopal, too, the victims organized themselves to defend their rights. Activists' organizations rallied thousands of survivors to ransack Carbide's offices in New Delhi and demand the immediate payment of the promised indemnities. Five years after the tragedy, its victims had still not laid hands on a single one of the $470 million they had been awarded.

Not surprisingly, so large a sum of money, even though placed in a special account administered by the supreme court, was a magnet for the greedy. Sheela Nadar, Padmini's mother, had to pay out 1,400 rupees for a dossier establishing her husband's death. Payment of baksheesh became obligatory in order to obtain access to the compensation desks or to the often very distant offices that handed out the first allocations of provisions and medical aid. In the final a.n.a.lysis, according to official figures, 548,519 survivors would eventually receive what was left of the money paid by Carbide: a little less than 60,000 rupees or approximately $1,400 for the death of a parent, and about half that in cases of serious personal injury. It was a far cry from the million rupees the New York lawyer had promised Ganga Ram and the Orya Bustee survivors.

Because the wind had been blowing in the direction of the bustees that night, it was the poorest of the poor who were most affected by the tragedy. Left to suffer, exploited by predators on all sides, the survivors soon found themselves subject to further persecution. Under the guise of a "beautification program" the new authorities used part of the moneys meant for the victims to empty the bustees of their Muslim population. Flanked by police, bulldozers razed several neighborhoods to the ground. Only the determination of about fifty Muslim women threatening to burn themselves to death succeeded in putting a temporary halt to the eviction of Muslims. But after a few days, they were all moved to Gandhinagar, outside the city. Iqbal, Ahmed Ba.s.si and Salar, who had escaped the scourge of MIC, were driven out by the madness of men. Like most of the other Muslims living in the Kali Grounds neighborhood, they had to abandon their homes again-this time for good.

In 1991, the Bhopal court summoned Warren Anderson, Union Carbide's chairman, to appear on a charge of "homicide in a criminal case." But the man who was enjoying peaceful retirement in his villa in Vero Beach, Florida, did not keep the promise he had made to a journalist as he left Indian soil on December 11, 1984. Not only was he not returning to the country where his company's factory had wrought disaster, but he actually managed to lower his profile within his own country. Anderson left Vero Beach, and his whereabouts are not publicly known. The international warrant for his arrest issued under Indian law remained unserved by Interpol. In March 2000, in response to a cla.s.s-action suit by victims' organizations in the federal court of the southern district of New York, Union Carbide's lawyer William Krohley said the company will accept process served in the name of Anderson but will not disclose his whereabouts. These organizations remain undaunted, however, and do not intend to give up. The graffiti "HANG ANDERSON,"

which the survivors never tire of repainting on their city walls, are a reminder that justice has not yet been done.

If the Indian people believe Warren Anderson is a fugitive, the prospects of bringing Union Carbide to justice are just as unlikely, for the very good reason-albeit one of small consolation to the victims-that the multinational no longer exists. Despite all its chairman's efforts, the tragedy on December 2, 1984, was the death of the proud company with the blue-and-white logo. The purchase of its agricultural division by the French company Rhne-Poulenc, now the proprietor of the inst.i.tute's Sevin factory, and the takeover in August 1999 of all of its a.s.sets, for the sum of $9.3 billion, by the Dow Chemical Group, meant that Union Carbide disappeared forever from the world's industrial horizon. The initiators of the various legal proceedings launched against the Danbury multinational let it be known that they would hold Dow Chemical responsible for the charges levied against Carbide. Their claim was given short shrift. "It is not in my power," declared Frank Popoff, Dow's CEO, "to take responsibility for an event which happened fifteen years ago, with a product we never developed, at a location where we never operated."

And what of the beautiful plant? One day in January 1985, shortly after Operation Faith, a tharagar turned up outside the teahouse in Orya Bustee.

"I'm looking for hands to dismantle the rails from the railway line leading to the factory," he said.

The stretch of track linking the factory to the main railway line had never been used. It was a testimony to the megalomania of the South Charleston engineers who had arranged for the purchase of both a locomotive and freight cars to transport the enormous quant.i.ties of Sevin the factory was supposed to produce. Timidly, Ganga Ram, who had lost most of the customers of his painting business in the catastrophe, put up his hand.

"I'm looking for work," he said, convinced that the tharagar would reject him when he saw his mutilated fingers.

But that day Carbide was taking on any available hands. The former leprosy sufferer would at last be able to have his revenge by helping to dismantle the monster that had once refused him employment.

For one year, Jagannathan Mukund headed the team a.s.signed to closing down the factory, a Herculean task that involved cleaning every piece of equipment, every pipe, every drum and tank, first with water and then with a chemical decontaminant. These cleaned and scrubbed parts of the factory were sold off to small local entrepreneurs. In 1986, when the job was done, the last workmen wearing the once prestigious coverall with the blue-and-white logo left the site forever.

Today, the abandoned factory looks like the vestige of some lost civilization. Its metal structures rust in the open air. In the rough gra.s.s lie pieces of the sarcophagi that protected the tanks. On the control room walls, the seventy dials rest in eternal peace, including the pressure gauge for tank 610, with its needle stuck on the extreme left of the instrument, lasting testament to the fury of the MIC. The notices with the inscription "SAFETY FIRST" add a touch of irony to a scene of industrial devastation.

What was to be done with this mute but powerful witness? In 1997, India's minister for culture suggested turning the whole of the Kali Grounds site into an amus.e.m.e.nt park. But the indignant outcry the proposal provoked caused the authorities to withdraw it. The accursed factory must remain there always, as a place of remembrance.

Fortunately, a privileged few managed to escape the misfortune that befell most of the tragedy's victims. Orya Bustee's bride and groom were among them. Miraculously resurrected after her rescue from the funeral pyre, Padmini was able to rejoin her loved ones after a long and painful recovery in Hamidia Hospital. She returned to Orya Bustee and set up home with her husband Dilip in her parents' hut. Very soon, however, the nightmare of that tragic night began to haunt her to the point where she could no longer bear the place in which she had spent her adolescence. The mere sight of the metal structures mocking her from a few hundred yards away very nearly drove her insane. That was when an opportunity presented itself in the form of a plot of land for sale, about forty miles from Bhopal, near the banks of the Narmada River. The idea of returning along the trail that had once brought her family from Orissa to Bhopal filled the young Adivasi with enthusiasm. She persuaded her husband that they could make their home in the country, have a small farm and live on what they produced. Her mother and brother were prepared to go with them. The indemnity they had just received for the death of the head of their family made the relocation just about feasible.

Dilip and Padmini built a hut, planted soy, lentils, vegetables and fruit trees. Little by little they dug out an irrigation system. Like all the farmers in the area, they bought "medicines" from traveling salesmen to protect their crops from insects, especially from the weevils that liked to attack potatoes. These door-to-door salesmen did not, of course, offer Sevin. Instead they had pyrethrum-based pesticides, which had the advantage of being both cheap and generally effective, except when it came to soya bean caterpillars, which were a real nightmare.

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 Muoz 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 inst.i.tute that houses the gynecology clinic set up by Dominique Lapierre.

JOHN LUKE COUVARAS-The engineer whose wife was ma.s.saged 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 Muoz, 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.

RAJk.u.mAR KESWANI-The Ca.s.sandra 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 a.s.sistance 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 inst.i.tutions 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 MUOZ-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.