Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (34 page)

He was the man who probably would have the most onerous responsibilities on that remarkable Sunday. Fifty-two-year-old Sharda
Diwedi was the managing director of Bhopal’s power station. That evening, his turbines would have to supply enough current
to light up the many feasts and wedding celebrations. The grandest was to take place in the Railway Colony. It was to mark
the nuptials of Rinu, youngest daughter of the chief controller of the Bhopal railroad.

The Railway Colony was typical of the neighborhoods built by the British to house railway employees close to the stations
in which they worked. A small town within a town, not too unlike the villages of Sussex or Surrey, with its lawns, its cottages,
its cricket pitch, tearoom, bank and a church with a Victorian gothic bell tower. And one of those institutions that seem
to crop up whenever two Englishmen get together: a club. On that particular Sunday, the colonial-style railway employees’
club accommodated the parents and at least two hundred guests of the groom’s family. Later that evening, over a thousand people
were due to squeeze themselves under Mahmoud Parvez’s huge shamianas erected on lawns illuminated with strings of multicolored
bulbs and floodlights. The managing director of the power station had just one worry: that one of the power cuts to which
India was accustomed might plunge the festivities into darkness. To cover that eventuality, he had a powerful emergency generator
set up behind one of the shamianas.

A cool, bright winter’s night had just fallen upon the City of the Begums. While preparations were going on in the Railway
Colony and elsewhere across the city, the married women in Orya Bustee had just finished dressing Padmini in her ceremonial
clothes. Her father appeared at the entrance to the hut.

“Sister Felicity, look how beautiful my daughter is,” whispered Ratna Nadar proudly. The nun had come to be with Padmini during
the last moments of her adolescence.

“Oh yes, your daughter is very beautiful,” the Scotswoman replied, “because God’s loving hand created her.”

In a scarlet sari dotted in gold thread, her face concealed behind a muslin veil, her bare feet painted red, her toes, ankles
and wrists glittering with jewels from the dowry brought by her future husband’s emissaries, Padmini, escorted by her mother,
was preparing to take her place on the straw mat in the center of the mandap. It was there, beside the sacred fire burning
in a small brazier, that she would await the arrival of the man whom destiny had given her as a husband.

Eyes shining with happiness, lips parted in a gratified smile, Ratna Nadar could not take his eyes off his child. It was the
most beautiful sight of his life, a fairy-tale scene, obliterating at a single stroke so many nightmare images: Padmini crying
of hunger and cold on the Bhopal station platform, foraging with her little hands through the piles of rubbish in between
the rails, begging a few scraps of coal from the engine drivers … For this child of poverty-stricken parents there had been
no play or schooling, only the supervision of her brother, the drudgery of carrying water, doing laundry and household chores.
It had been a life of slavery that only her meeting with Sister Felicity had relieved. Today, dressed like a princess, Padmini
savored her happiness, her triumph, her revenge on a cursed karma.

A piercing cry, then the sound of moaning suddenly rent the night. A neighbor came running: “Come quickly! Boda’s having her
baby.” Without a thought for her wedding clothes, Padmini dragged Sister Felicity to the hut where the wife of the dairyman
Bablubhai was writhing in pain. Old Prema Bai was already there. Padmini held a candle over the thin, agonized face of the
woman in labor. She was soaked in blood. Sister Felicity could see the child’s skull showing between Boda’s thighs. The young
woman could not manage to expel it.

“Push!” urged the nun. “Push as hard as you can.”

Boda made such an effort that the tears poured down her cheeks.

“No, not like that, little sister! Push downwards. First try and breathe deeply, then push as you force the air out of your
lungs. Quickly!”

Padmini lit a second candle to shed more light on Boda’s lower belly.

“For the love of God, push harder!” begged the nun.

The dairyman’s wife bore down with all her strength. Sister Felicity, who had assisted with dozens of births among the destitute,
knew that this was their last chance of bringing a living child into the world.

“Stand opposite me!” she ordered the old midwife, who seemed overwhelmed by the situation. “While I try and straighten the
baby, you massage her stomach from top to bottom.”

As soon as the old woman started rubbing, the nun gently slid her hand behind the nape of the infant’s neck. Boda let out
a wail.

“Breathe deeply,” ordered the nun, “and push regularly, without jerking.”

All the young woman’s muscles grew taut. With her head thrust back and her teeth clenched, she made a desperate effort.

The nun would never be able to explain what happened next. Her hand had just reached the baby’s shoulders when two rats fell
off the roof and passed in front of her eyes before landing on the stomach of the laboring woman. Taken by surprise, she withdrew
her hand. Was it the suddenness of her movement or the shock occasioned by the creatures’ fall? One thing was sure: all at
once the child emerged.

Prema Bai cut the cord with her knife and tied it off with a strand of jute. The newborn baby was a fine boy. Sister Felicity
guessed he must have weighed nearly six pounds. Padmini watched as he filled his lungs, opened his mouth and let out a cry
that was greeted with a tremendous echo of joy inside the hut and out into the alleyway.

“Big sister, you’ve given me a son!” The dairyman Bablubhai was overjoyed. He brought a bowl full of rice, which he held out
to Sister Felicity. “Put this rice next to my boy, so that the goddess may grant him a long and prosperous life.”

Then he called for an oil lamp. According to tradition, it had to burn without interruption until the next day. If it went
out, it would be a sign that the child born on this Sunday blessed by the stars would not live.

The magic moment in Padmini’s life had at last arrived. A brass band burst into play, accompanied by singing. Preceded by
a troupe of dancers outrageously made up with kohl, the groom’s procession made its entry onto the parade ground outside the
teahouse. When she saw the boy astride his white horse, Sister Felicity thought she was witnessing “the appearance of a prince
from some Eastern legend.” Indeed, with his cardboard crown sparkling with spangles, a brocade tunic over white silk jodhpurs
and mules encrusted with glass beads, the former little ragpicker and train scavenger looked like one of those Indian rulers
popularized in engravings. Before climbing onto the mandap, where his bride awaited him beside the sacrificial fire, Dilip
had to submit to the ritual of purdah: the imposition of a veil so that his betrothed’s eyes might not see him before the
appointed moment in the liturgy. He was then invited by the master of the ceremonies to sit down beside Padmini. Belram Mukkadam
had put on an elegant brand-new white punjabi for the occasion. Before the ceremony he had secretly conducted his own private
celebration. He had tied his bull Nandi, bought with Carbide’s compensation money, to the trunk of an acacia tree, and again
painted his horns red and decorated his forehead with a trident, the emblem of the god Shiva. With this tribute, Mukkadam
sought to invoke the sacred animal’s blessing on the union of Dilip and Padmini.

“In the kingdom of heaven, theirs will be the most beautiful faces,” thought Sister Felicity as she looked at the men, women
and children, in their festival clothes, encircling the bride and groom. With her bowed head partially concealed by her veil,
Padmini seemed deep in meditation. This was the moment in which the nun chose to do something close to her heart. Sister Felicity
got up and walked to Padmini.

“This little gold cross was given to me by my mother when I consecrated my life to God,” she said, fastening the chain around
Padmini’s neck. “It has protected me. Now I’m giving it to you so that it may protect you.”

“Thank you, big sister, I shall wear it always in remembrance of you,” whispered Padmini, her eyes bright with emotion.

Then began the long ritual of an Adivasi marriage, punctuated with mantras in Sanskrit, the language of the sacred texts.
Mukkadam had learned them by heart for the occasion, although neither he nor anyone else there understood them. He began by
asking the couple to plunge their right hands into a baked clay jar filled with a paste made of sandalwood and tuber. In it
two rings were hidden. The first to find a ring had the right to extract a forfeit from the other. After this preamble came
the
panigrahan.
For the Adivasis as for Hindus, this was an essential part of the marriage rite. The officiant took from the pocket of his
punjabi a small piece of mauve cord and, taking hold of the couple’s right hands, tied them together as he repeated their
names aloud. The culminating moment had arrived. The band and the congregation fell silent. Now Mukkadam invited the married
couple to officially make each other’s acquaintance. Slowly, timidly, each parted the other’s veil with their free hand. Dilip’s
delighted face appeared before Padmini’s big, slanting eyes. Her heart was pounding. Her mother, father and brother watched
her with barely contained emotion. Dalima, for her part, could no longer hold back tears. Already Mukkadam was asking the
pair to complete the last part of the ceremony: with their right hands still bound together by the piece of cord, husband
and wife walked seven times around the sacrificial fire.

It was ten o’clock at night and the celebrations were only just beginning. Helped by a group of women, Dalima started laying
out plates made out of banana leaves on the sisal mats that had been rolled out near the teahouse. All the guests from Orya
Bustee would soon sample the wedding banquet, looking out over the strange towers and pipework of the Carbide factory, lit
up with strings of lights like an oceanliner.