Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (18 page)

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.

The begum’s dinners also brought together passing artists, politicians, writers and poets. Another regular was of course Eduardo
Muñoz, to whom Bhopal owed the arrival of Carbide. The food at these dinners was reputed to be the best in Bhopal. For young
Briley every invitation was a gastronomic experience. It was there that, for the first time in his life, he tasted partridge
cooked in coriander and sweets made out of curdled milk in a syrup of cinnamon and ginger.

It had become a tradition: the weddings of the begum’s grandchildren, nephews and nieces were always held at her home under
an immense
shamiana
, a large tent for festivities and ceremonies, erected in the courtyard. They were the occasion for three days of uninterrupted
celebrations. The drawing rooms, courtyards and corridors of the palace were littered with divans on which guests reclined
to drink and listen to ghazals and other poetic forms. Despite being a Muslim, Selma had been schooled in Hindu dance, and
at these family parties she could often be persuaded to perform. Adorning her ankles and wrists with strings of bells, she
would appear on the dais and give passionate performances of
kathak
, a southern Indian dance accompanied by the complex rhythms of tabla and sarod players. During these moments, the scent of
patchouli and musk floating beneath the shamiana would become so intoxicating that the American thought he would never again
be able to tolerate the smell of phosgene or MIC.

Not all the expatriates from South Charleston in the City of the Begums were lucky enough to have a love affair with a princess.
But the attractions of Bhopal were numerous, starting with the uninterrupted succession of religious festivals, celebrations
and ceremonies. There was the
bujaria
, the noisy, colorful procession of thousands of eunuchs that wound through the old town; and the great Hindu festival in
honor of the goddess Durga, whose richly decorated statues were immersed in the lake in the presence of tens of thousands
of faithful. Then there was the Sikh celebration of the birth of Guru Nanak, the founder of their religion, with firecrackers
that woke up the whole city. And there was the Jain festival in honor of their prophet Mahavira and the return of the pilgrimage
season. Autumn brought Eid and Ishtema, two Muslim festivals that drew hundreds of thousands of followers to the old part
of town, as well as many other religious and secular celebrations that reflected the extraordinary diversity of the people
of Bhopal.

O
ne was called Parvati, after the wife of the god Shiva; another Surabhi, “the cow with all gifts” born, according to the Vedas,
of the great churning of the sea of milk; a third was Gauri, “the light”; and the last two were Sita and Kamadhenu. So gentle
were they that little children were not afraid to stroke their foreheads and gaze into their large eyes surrounded by lashes
so long they looked as if they were wearing makeup. These five cows were some of the three hundred million heads that made
up the world’s largest stock of cattle. For the five families in Orya Bustee to whom they belonged, they were an enviable
asset. Belram Mukkadam, the cripple Rahul, Padmini’s father Ratna Nadar, the former leper Ganga Ram and the shoemaker Iqbal
were the lucky owners of this modest herd. The few pints of milk they gave each day provided a little butter and yogurt, the
only animal protein available to the hungry people of the bustee apart from goat milk. The dung from these cows was carefully
collected and made into cakes that were dried in the sun and used as cooking fuel. Each animal knew its way home and, after
a day spent roaming the Kali Grounds in search of greenery, returned to its owner in the evening. On the twelfth day of Asvina’s
moon in September, of Kartika’s moon in November, and during the festival of new rice, the owners dyed the cows’ horns blue
and red and decorated them with garlands of marigold and jasmine. The animals were then arranged in a semicircle outside Belram
Mukkadam’s teahouse, so the sorcerer Nilamber could recite mantras over them. As the neighborhood’s most long-standing resident,
it fell to Mukkadam to make the customary speech.

He did so with particular feeling. “Each one of our cows is a celestial animal, a symbol of the mother who gives her milk,”
he declared. “She was created on the same day as Brahma, founder of our universe, and every part of her body is inhabited
by a god, from the nostrils where Asvin dwells to the fringing of her tail, where Yama resides.”

The sorcerer Nilamber, in his saffron robe, intervened in his turn to emphasize “how sacred everything that comes from the
cow is.” Upon these words, Rahul brought a bowl filled with a paste. It was the traditional purée made out of gifts from the
precious animal—milk, butter, yogurt, dung and urine. The receptacle was passed from hand to hand so that everyone could take
a small ball of the purifying substance. Later, led by Padmini, young girls would spread a little earth and fresh dung mixed
with urine over the mud flooring of their huts. This protective layer had the power to repel scorpions, cockroaches and above
all, mosquitoes, the persistent scourge of the Bhopalis.

That autumn festival day, Mukkadam had a special mission of his own. As soon as the ceremony was over, he attached a garland
of flowers to the horns of his cow Parvati, and led her away to his hut at the end of the first alleyway. Inside the one and
only room, Mukkadam’s elderly father lay stretched out on a charpoy, watched over by his two daughters who fanned him and
uttered prayers. His halting breath and dull eyes suggested that death was imminent. Mukkadam pushed the cow over to the dying
man’s bedside, then took the tip of her tail and tied it with a piece of cord to his father’s hand.

“Lead this holy man from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality,” he murmured gently, stroking
the animal’s forehead.

Four days after the death of Belram Mukkadam’s father, a catastrophe befell the inhabitants of Orya Bustee. Padmini was drawing
a bucket of water from the well when she smelled a noxious odor coming from the shaft. The water was a strange whitish color.
The old woman Prema Bai plunged her hand into the bucket, scooped up a little of the liquid, and tasted it.

“This water is contaminated!” she announced.

All the other women present confirmed her verdict. Looking up at the steel structures that loomed on the horizon, Padmini’s
mother shouted, “Come on everyone! Come and see! Carbide has poisoned our water!”

A few hours later, Rahul and several of the neighborhood’s young men burst into the teahouse.

“Belram, come quickly!” cried the cripple. “Your cow Parvati and all the other cows are dead. The crows and vultures that
ate them are dead, too.”

Mukkadam set off at a run for the place the boys had indicated. The animals lay stretched out beside a pool fed by a rubber
pipe that issued from the factory. “It’s water from Carbide that’s killed them,” he said angrily. “The same water that has
poisoned our well. Let’s all go to Carbide, quickly!”

A cortege of three or four hundred people promptly set off on a march to the factory. The old man Omar Pasha and his sons,
the former leper Ganga Ram, the shoemaker Iqbal, his friend Bassi the tailor and the bicycle repairman Salar marched at the
head. Even the dairyman Bablubhai and the sorcerer Nilamber went. “Pay us compensation for the cows! Stop poisoning our well!”
they yelled in chorus. In the second row came six men, bent beneath the weight of the charpoy they were carrying on their
shoulders. On this string bed they had placed the body of the American multinational’s first victim. The painted horns, visible
between the folds of the shroud, revealed that it was a cow. “Today it’s our cows. Tomorrow it will be us!” shouted the angriest
members of the cortege. Hope of employment and the prestige of the uniform with the Carbide logo continued to feature in people’s
dreams, but these deaths shattered any illusion they had of living in neighborly harmony.

The plant management appointed one of the engineers to settle the matter as quickly as possible. The American stood in front
of the demonstrators.

“Friends, set your minds at rest!” he shouted into the megaphone. “Union Carbide will compensate you generously for your loss.
If the owners of the cows that have died will just put up their hands!” The engineer was astonished to see a forest of hands
spring up. He took a bundle of bills out of his pocket. “Union Carbide is offering five thousand rupees for the loss of each
animal,” he announced. “That’s more than ten times the price of each of your cattle. Here are twenty-five thousand rupees.
Share them between you!”

He held out the wad of bills to Mukkadam.

“And the water in our well?” insisted Ganga Ram.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have it analyzed and take whatever steps are necessary.”

The results of the tests were so horrific that the factory management never released them. In addition, soil samples taken
from outside the periphery of the Sevin formulation unit revealed high levels of mercury, chromium, copper, nickel and lead.
Chloroform, carbon tetrachloride and benzene were detected in the water from the wells to the south and southeast of the factory.
The experts’ report was explicit: this was a case of potentially deadly contamination. Yet, for all the promises of Carbide’s
representative, nothing was done to stop the pollution.