Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (30 page)

That morning of Wednesday October 31, 1984, promised to be a splendidly clear, bright autumn day. A soft breeze rustled the
leaves of the neem trees in the vast garden where a privileged few waited to receive their morning darshan. They were joined
by a British television crew who had come to interview the prime minister. On the previous evening, Indira had returned from
an exhausting electoral tour of Orissa, the native state of most of the refugees in Orya Bustee. In the presence of the thousands
of followers who had come to hear her, she had concluded her speech with surprising words. “I don’t have the ambition to live
a long life, but I am proud to live it serving the nation,” she had said. “If I were to die today, each drop of my blood would
make India stronger.”

At eight minutes past nine, she walked down the three steps from her residence into the garden. She was wearing an orange
sari, one of the three colors of the national flag. On passing the two sentries on either side of the path, she pressed her
hands together at her heart in a cordial namaste. The two men wore traditional Sikh beards and turbans. One of them, forty-year-old
Beant Singh, was well known to her; for ten years he had formed part of her closest bodyguard. The other, twenty-one-year-old
Satwant Singh, had been in her service only four months.

A few weeks earlier, Ashwini Kumar, former director general of the Border Security Force of India, had come to see Indira
Gandhi to express his concern. “Madam, do not keep Sikhs in your security service,” he had urged her. He had reminded her
that Sikh extremists had sworn to get back at her for the army’s bombardment and bloody seizure of the Sikhs’ most sacred
sanctuary, the Golden Temple of Amritsar. On June 6 of the previous year, the attack had killed 650 Sikhs. Indira Gandhi had
smiled and reassured her visitor. Indicating the figure of Beant Singh in the garden, she had replied, “While I’m fortunate
enough to have Sikhs like him about me, I have nothing to fear.” Skeptical, the former police executive had insisted. Irritated,
she ended their meeting. “How can we claim to be secular if we go communal?” she demanded.

On that thirty-first of October, she had scarcely finished greeting the two guards when the elder pulled out his P-38 and
fired three bullets point blank into her chest. His young accomplice promptly emptied the thirty rounds in the magazine of
his Sten gun into her body. At least seven shots punctured her abdomen, ten her chest, several her heart. The mother of India
did not even have time to cry out. She died on the spot.

Just as the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi thirty-six years previously had done, the news plunged the nation into painful
stupor. By the middle of the afternoon, every city in India had become a ghost town. In Bhopal, a twelve-day period of mourning
was decreed. All ceremonies, celebrations and festivities were canceled, while cinemas, schools, offices and businesses closed
their doors. Flags were flown at half-mast. Newspapers published special editions in which they invited readers to express
their despair. “
INDIA HAS BEEN ORPHANED
,” proclaimed one of the headlines. Another paper wrote, “In a country as diversified as ours, only Indira could guarantee
our unity.”

“We will no longer hear the irresistible music of her eloquence …” lamented Bhopal’s people recalling her recent visit for
the inauguration of the Arts and Culture building. “The realization of this project will make Bhopal the cultural capital
of the country,” she had announced to applause and cheers of “Indira Ki Jai!” The city’s companies, businesses and organizations
filled the newspapers with notices expressing their grief and offering their condolences. One of the messages was signed Union
Carbide, whose entire staff, so it declared, wept for the death of India’s prime minister.

That afternoon, the shattered voice of the governor of Madhya Pradesh resounded over the airwaves of All India Radio. “The
light that guided us has gone out,” he declared. “Let us pray God to grant us the strength to remain united in this time of
crisis.” A little later the inhabitants of the bustees gathered around the transistor belonging to Salar the bicycle repairman.
Arjun Singh, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, who had made them property owners by granting them their patta, was also expressing
his sorrow. “She was the hope of millions of poor people in this country. Whether they were Adivasis, harijans, inhabitants
of the bustees or rickshaw-pullers, she always had time for them and a solution to offer to their problems… . May her sacrifice
inspire us to continue to go forward …”

It was not until the next day, however, when the funeral was held, that the residents of Bhopal along with all the people
of India really became conscious of the tragedy that had befallen their country. For the first time in history, television
was going to broadcast the event all over the nation. Anyone who had access to a set, whether through some
zamindar
,
^*
organization or club would see the images relayed live. All at once an entire nation was to be joined together by media communion.
At daybreak, at the behest of Ganga Ram, owner of the only TV in the bustees, Kali Grounds huts were empty of all occupants.
Belram Mukkadam and the shoemaker Iqbal had stacked several of the teahouse tables on top of one another and covered them
with a large white sheet, a symbol of purity and mourning, and then decorated their makeshift altar with garlands of yellow
marigold and jasmine flowers. Then they had positioned the set high enough for everyone to see the screen.

Since the early hours of the morning, the crowd had been gathering in silence outside the teahouse: men on one side, women
and children on the other. Before the ceremony started, they watched silently as representatives of the country’s different
religions succeeded one another, reciting prayers and appealing for forgiveness and tolerance.

Suddenly, a murmur rose from the assembly. Wide-eyed, the residents of the Kali Grounds were witnessing an historic event:
the transportation to the funeral pyre of the woman, who, only the previous day, had ruled the country. The litter, covered
with a bed of rose petals, jasmine flowers and garlands of marigolds, filled the screen. Indira Gandhi’s face, with the veil
of her red cotton sari set like a halo around it, emerged from an ocean of flowers. With her eyes closed and her features
relaxed, she radiated an unusual serenity. The screen showed hundreds of thousands of Indians massed along the funeral route
leading to the sacred banks of the Yamuna River, where the cremation would take place. The cameras lingered on tearful faces,
on people clinging to street lamps and branches of trees or perched on rooftops. Like waters coming together again in the
wake of a ship, the crowd rushed in behind the funeral carriage—ministers, coolies, office workers, businessmen, Hindus, Muslims,
even Sikhs in their turbans, representatives of all the castes, religions, races and colors of India, all united in shared
grief. For three hours this endless river swelled with fresh waves of humanity. When, finally, the procession reached the
place where a pyre had been built on a brick platform, the residents of the Kali Grounds watched as a groundswell surged through
the hundreds of thousands of people gathered around their fallen leader. To Padmini, all those people looked like millions
of ants in a nest. To old Prema Bai, who remembered seeing photographs of Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral, it was the finest tribute
to any servant of India since the death of the nation’s liberator. Among the crowd of television viewers, a woman with short
hair said her rosary. Sister Felicity had wanted to share the sorrow of her brothers and sisters in the bustees.

As soon as the funeral carriage stopped, a squad of soldiers carried the mortal remains of Indira Gandhi to the pyre. The
people of the Kali Grounds saw a man dressed in white, wearing the legendary white cap of the Congress party and a white shawl
lined in red over his shoulders. They all recognized Rajiv, Indira’s elder son, her heir, the man the country had chosen to
succeed her. According to tradition, it was his responsibility to carry out the last rites. The cameras showed him spreading
a mixture of ghee, coconut milk, camphor essence and ritual powders over his mother’s corpse. While the television set flooded
the esplanade with Vedic mantras recited by a group of priests in saffron robes, Rajiv took hold of the cup containing the
sacrificial fire. Five times India’s new leader circled the pyre, from left to right, the direction in which the Earth revolves
around the sun. The crowd saw his son Rahul appear next to him, together with his wife Sonia and their daughter Priyanka.
Although traditionally women did not take part in cremations, they helped place firewood around the body. A camera focused
next on the flaming cup, which Rajiv raised for a moment above the surrounding heads before plunging it into the pyre. When
the first flames began to lick at the blocks of sandalwood, a voice intoned the same Vedic prayer that Belram Mukkadam had
recited on the death of his father.

Lead me from the unreal to the real
,

From darkness to light

From death to immortality …

At that instant, a mighty howl broke forth from the crowd. The cry uttered over six hundred miles away acted like a detonator.
Suddenly, the voice of Rahul drowned out the sound of the television. “We must avenge Indira!” he yelled. His usually smiling
mouth was twisted with fury. “Rahul is right, Indira should be avenged!” numerous other voices took up the cry. “This city’s
full of Sikhs. Let’s go and burn down their houses!” someone shouted. At this cry, the entire group leaped to their feet,
ready to rush to Hamidia Road and the area around Bhopal’s main
gurdwara
, or Sikh temple.

Climbing onto the platform, Ganga Ram addressed the multitude. “No need to go to Hamidia. It would be enough …”

He had no time to finish his sentence. Ratna Nadar had jumped on the platform. “Friends, Nilamber has just been found dead.
He hung himself from a beam of his hut. On his charpoy, there is a picture of Indira and a garland of flowers.”

Nilamber, the sorcerer whom everybody loved because he only predicted good fortune! The news of his suicide bewildered all
those present. Death was a familiar enough event in the bustees but this time it was different. Nilamber had been overcome
by grief. It was Belram Mukkadam’s turn to mount the stage.

“Ganga’s right,” he cried. “It isn’t worth going all the way to Hamidia Road to set fire to the Sikh houses, it would be enough
to set fire to the moneylender’s, the man who sucks us dry. Everyone to Pulpul Singh’s house!”

By setting fire to Pulpul Singh’s house they would be making a Sikh pay for the horrible murder perpetrated by two of his
brothers in religion, but they would also be avenging all the crimes committed by the loan shark who had, at one time or another,
humiliated each and every one of them. His safe already contained several property deeds mortgaged against pitiful loans.
Pulpul Singh was the ideal scapegoat. By setting fire to his house, obliging him to flee, perhaps even killing him, they would
be avenging Indira, avenging Nilamber, avenging all the injustices of life.

At the first cry for vengeance Sister Felicity slipped away from the crowd. She felt it was her duty to prevent her brothers’
and sisters’ anger from ending in tragedy. Spotting the dark silhouette hurrying away, Padmini joined her. Preempting her
question, the nun took the young Indian girl by the arm and swept her along with her.

“Come with me quickly to Pulpul Singh’s. We must warn him so he has time to get away.”

Together they ran to the two-story house at the entrance to Chola.

Pulpul Singh was surprised by the arrival of the two women. Neither the nun nor young Padmini belonged to his usual clientele.

“What wind of good fortune blows you this way?” he asked.

“Get out of here! For the love of God, leave immediately with your family!” the nun begged him. “They want to take vengeance
on you for Indira Gandhi’s assassination.”

She had scarcely finished speaking when the front-runners of the crowd arrived. They were armed with iron bars, pickaxes,
bricks, bolts and even Molotov cocktails.

“For the first time I saw a sentiment on their faces that I had thought not to find in the poor,” Sister Felicity later remembered.
“I saw hatred. The women were among the most over-wrought. I recognized some whose children I’d nursed, even though their
contorted features made them almost unrecognizable. The residents of the Kali Grounds had lost all reason. I realized then
what might happen one day if the poor from here were to march on the rich quarters of New Bhopal.”

Terrified, Pulpul Singh and his family fled out of the back of their house but, not before wasting precious time trying to
push the safe to the back of the veranda and hide it with a cloth. In the meantime, the rioters had thrown their first bottle
of flaming petrol. It hit the ground just behind Sister Felicity and Padmini who had remained outside. The explosion was so
powerful that they were thrown toward each other. Dense smoke enveloped them. When the cloud cleared, they found themselves
in the middle of the rampaging crowd. The shoemaker Iqbal had brought a crowbar to force open the gate. Suddenly someone shouted,
“Get them! They’ve escaped out the back!” A group took off in pursuit of the fugitives. Their Ambassador automobile had failed
to start, so they were trying to get away on foot. Restricted by their saris, the women had difficulty running. Soon the family
was caught and brought roughly back to the house. In his flight Pulpul Singh had lost his turban.