Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (4 page)

These little creatures are unrelenting. The same maggot can travel from plant to plant in fields of corn, barley, oats or
rye. Stems punctured and roots consumed by the bulimia of millions of larvae, cereal crops are destroyed on a vast scale before
producing a single grain. Rice, which makes up 60 percent of the grain used as food for the world’s population, is a prime
target for these plunderers. Rice whorl maggots with their cylindrical bodies, pink semiloopers, biting spring beetles, grayish-colored,
legless tipula, the armyworm caterpillar, June bug larvae, leafhoppers, millipedes, threadworms—over a hundred species attack
this single cereal grain. Among the most devastating is a moth called “pyralid,” meaning literally “insect living in fire,”
whose long, grayish caterpillars dig tunnels in the stalks of rice until they topple over. No less destructive are certain
vicious little creatures armed with sucking stylets and protected from predators by thick carapaces. As for weevils, they
have probably gobbled up more rice, corn and potatoes than humankind has managed to consume since agriculture first began.

For thousands of years, man has been conducting a desperate war against the authors of this destruction. Texts from ancient
China, Rome and medieval Europe, all abound in extraordinary accounts of such battles. Lacking any effective means to ward
off attack, our ancestors relied on magical and religious practices. Nepalese peasants posted notices in their paddy fields
prohibiting insects from entry “on pain of legal proceedings.” Less naive but just as unrealistic, Roman peasants had pregnant
women walk in circles around their fruit trees. Medieval Christians organized processions and novenas to counteract the cochylis
and the corn and vine pyralids. Farmers in Venezuela beat the ears of their grain with belts in the hope that such rough treatment
would strengthen their plants’ resistance to parasites. While Siamese farmers dotted their fields with eggshells pinned to
sticks, those in Malaysia attached dead toads to bamboo poles to drive the white fly from their rice fields. Believing insect
attacks to be the necessary consequence of sin in a divine and perfect creation, people took them to court. In 1120 in the
Swiss city of Lausanne, caterpillars were excommunicated. Five centuries later a court in the French province of Auvergne
condemned other caterpillars to go and “finish their wretched lives” in a place expressly provided for the purpose. Insects
were brought to trial in Europe until 1830.

Fortunately, other more realistic countermeasures had been tried. By flooding their fields at certain times of the year, peasants
in the south of India had managed to drown millions of destructive insects. In Kenya and Mexico the simple idea of planting
squares of maize as lures in the middle of other crops had saved vegetable and sorghum plantations. Elsewhere the use of predatory
insects had won some splendid victories. Texts dating from the third century A.D. report that Chinese growers infested their
lemon trees with ants, which ate Vanessas, the richly colored butterflies that sowed terror in their orchards. Fifteen centuries
later, the mandibles of a killer scarabaeid beetle saved the citrus plantations of California from the ravages of the Australian
fly.

At the end of the nineteenth century, vegetable-based materials such as nicotine or the pyrethrum flower, and mineral substances
such as arsenic and copper sulfate, supplied peasants with new weapons, which they called by the magic names of “insecticides,”
and “pesticides.” With the discovery in 1868 that spraying the arsenic-based dye Paris green on cotton parasites had a guaranteed
effect, the United States launched a frenzied campaign to commercialize natural poisons. By 1910, the new American pesticide
industry was worth more than $20 million. Lead-arsenate-based products were then added to Paris green. The first world war
brought about explosive expansion in other directions. With German submarines preventing the importing of Paris green and
the war effort commandeering arsenic for the manufacture of munitions, flares and combat gas, insecticide producers turned
to the chemical industry.

Only too delighted to find an outlet for petroleum byproducts, chemists were quick to take up the challenge. Large European
and American companies invested huge sums of money in research into synthetic molecules that could destroy predatory insects.
Thus the period between the two world wars witnessed the advent of a string of chemical families, each with new capabilities
for exterminating parasites. The goal appeared to be reached on the eve of the second world war when Herman Mueller, a Swiss
chemist trying to come up with an effective contact insecticide, discovered a molecule that seemed to meet his requirements.
It bore the unwieldy name of dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane. Fortunately the Swiss scientist found a shorter, more convenient
label. The insect world was about to tremble; DDT had been born. This spectacular discovery earned its author the Nobel prize
for physiology and medicine, since DDT would bring about the mass extermination of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the field
of military operations, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. At the end of the war this organic
insecticide was put to the civilian use for which it had been invented. Field studies showed that it swiftly destroyed an
extensive range of plant-eating insects, and thus immediately increased agricultural yield. Experiments carried out in New
York and Wisconsin revealed that the yield from potato fields treated with DDT shot up by 60 percent. The euphoria that greeted
these gratifying results subsided when scientists discovered that DDT also contaminated the earth, mammals, birds, fish and
even people. It was soon declared illegal in most Western countries. In Europe and the United States, legislation was introduced
to oblige pesticide manufacturers to respect the increasingly draconian protection and safety standards. Under pressure from
an impatient agricultural industry, they geared their research to finding products that would reconcile the destruction of
insects with a level of toxicity tolerable to humanity and its environment. An extraordinary adventure was about to begin.

A
fter the fifty-nine hours in the colorful congestion of an Indian train, the exiles from Mudilapa at last reached their journey’s
end: Bhopal. In the months that followed India’s independence, this prestigious city had been made the capital of Madhya Pradesh,
a state a little larger than California and situated at the geographical heart of the country. Padmini Nadar and her family
had marveled continuously on the beauty of the countryside they traversed, especially as they drew nearer to the city. Wasn’t
it in these deep, mysterious forests that the god Rama and the Pandava brothers of Hindu mythology had taken refuge, and that
Rudyard Kipling had set
The Jungle Book
? And wasn’t it true that tigers and elephants still roamed the jungle? A few miles before their destination the railway had
run past the famous caves of Bhimbekta, the walls of which were decorated with prehistoric aboriginal rock paintings.

The station where the immigrants from Orissa got off was one of those caravanserais swirling with noise, activity and smells,
typical of India’s large railway terminals. It had been built the century before. Not even the most colorful festival in Adivasi
folklore could have given Padmini or her family an inkling of the celebrations staged in that station on November 18, 1884,
its inauguration day. A British colonial administrator had proposed linking the ancient princely city to British India’s rail
network after a terrible drought had caused tens of thousands of local people to die of starvation, deprived of aid for want
of communication lines. History has largely overlooked the name of the flamboyant Henry Daly who was responsible for giving
Bhopal the most valuable asset an Indian town could then receive from its colonizers. A retinue of britannic excellencies
in braided uniforms studded with medals and all the local dignitaries in ceremonial costumes had come running at the invitation
of the begum, a slight woman hidden beneath the folds of a
burkah
,
^*
who ruled over the sultanate of Bhopal. The festivities went on for three days and three nights. Along railway tracks decked
out with triumphal arches in the red, white and blue of the British empire, crowds of local people had gathered to greet the
arrival of the first seven carriages decorated with marigolds. On the platform stood a double file of mounted lancers, companies
of turbaned sepoys and the musicians of the royal brass band. Alas, there was no radio or television in those days to immortalize
the speeches exchanged by the representative of Victoria, “Empress of her subjects over the seas,” and the sovereign who presided
over this small corner of British India. “I offer up a thousand thanks to the all-powerful God who has granted that Bhopal
enjoy the signal protection of Her Imperial Majesty so that the brilliance of Western science may shine forth upon our land
…” the Begum Shah Jahan had declared. In response, the envoy from London extolled the political and commercial advantages
that the railway would bring, not only to the small kingdom of Bhopal, but to the whole of central India. Then he raised his
glass in a solemn toast to the success of the modern convenience, for which the enlightened sovereign had provided the funds.
A firework display crowned the occasion. That day a piece of ancestral India had espoused itself to progress.

For a long moment the Nadars hesitated without daring to take a step, so overwhelmed were they by the scene that greeted them
as they got out of the train car. The platform was packed with other dispossessed peasants who had come there, like them,
in search of work. The Nadars found themselves trapped in a tide of people coming and going in all directions. Coolies trotted
about with mountains of suitcases and parcels on their heads, vendors offered every conceivable merchandise for sale. Never
before had they seen such sumptuousness: pyramids of oranges, sandals, combs, scissors, padlocks, glasses, bags; piles of
shawls, saris,
dhotis;
^*
newspapers, all kinds of food and drink. Padmini and her family were bewildered, astounded, lost. Around them many of the
other travelers appeared to be just as disoriented. Only Mangal the parrot seemed completely at ease. He never stopped warbling
his joy and making the children laugh.

“Daddy, what are we going to do now?” Padmini asked, visibly at a loss.

“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” added her brother, Gopal, who was holding the parrot’s cage above his head so that
his parents would see him in case they got separated.

“We should look for a policeman,” advised the old man Prodip, who had been no more able than his son to decipher the contract
the tharagar for the railway had given them.

Outside the station, an officer in a white helmet was trying to channel the chaotic flow of traffic. Ratna cut a way through
to him.

“We’ve just arrived from Orissa,” he murmured tentatively. “Do you know if anyone from there lives around here?”

The policeman signaled to him that he had not understood the question. It was hardly surprising; so many people speaking different
languages got off the train at Bhopal.

Suddenly Padmini spotted a man selling
samosas
, triangular fritters stuffed with vegetables or meat, on the far side of the square. With the sixth sense that Indians have
for identifying a stranger’s origin and caste, the little girl was convinced she had found a compatriot. She was not wrong.

“Don’t worry, friends,” declared the man, “there’s an area around here occupied exclusively by people from our province. It’s
called the Orya Bustee
^*
and the people who live there are all from Orissa like you and me, and speak Orya, our language.” He waved an arm in the
direction of the minaret of a mosque opposite the station. “Skirt that mosque,” he explained, “and continue straight ahead.
When you get to the railway line, turn right. You’ll see a load of huts and sheds. That’s Orya Bustee.”

Ratna Nadar bowed down to the ground in thanks, touching the samosa seller’s sandals with his right hand, which he then placed
on his head.

Padmini rushed to the parrot’s cage. “We’re saved!” she cried. The bird responded with a triumphant squawk.