Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (52 page)

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 Muñoz 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 god 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 god, for the future belonged to them.

W
ARREN
A
NDERSON
—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.

S
HYAM
B
ABU
—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.

S
AJDA
B
ANO
—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 institute that houses the gynecology
clinic set up by Dominique Lapierre.

J
OHN
L
UKE
C
OUVARAS
—The engineer whose wife was massaged 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.

S
UMAN
D
EY
—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.

S
HARDA
D
IWEDI
—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.

R
ANJIT
D
UTTA
—The Indian engineer who, along with Eduardo Muñoz, 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.

D
R
. D
EEPAK
G
ANDHE
—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.

R
AJKUMAR
K
ESWANI
—The Cassandra 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.

R
EHMAN
K
HAN
—The poetry-loving factory worker, who became an instrument of destiny, still lives in Bhopal. He works for Madhya Pradesh’s
forestry department.

C
OLONEL
G
URCHARAN
S
INGH
K
ANUJA
—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 assistance 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.

P
ROFESSOR
N.P. M
ISHRA
—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 institutions all over the world. A notice displays the
price of a consultation: one hundred and fifty rupees, approximately three dollars.

J
AGANNATHAN
M
UKUND
—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.

E
DUARDO
M
UÑOZ
—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.

P
ADMINI
N
ADAR AND
H
ER
H
USBAND
D
ILIP
—see the Epilogue.

K
AMAL
P
AREEK
—The Indian engineer who left his beautiful plant because he could not bear to see its safety standards declining, now lives
in New Delhi where he works as an independent consultant to the chemical industry.

S
HEKIL
Q
URESHI
—The Muslim supervisor who was the last to leave the factory on the night of the catastrophe now runs a factory for production
of alum used in purifying water. He is suffering from serious respiratory aftereffects. Like Mukund, he too is under indictment
to stand trial for his role in the tragedy.

G
ANGA
R
AM
—The leprosy and gas survivor has his small house-painting business running again. The Bhopal municipal government gave the
occupants of Orya Bustee a plot of land less than a mile north of the Kali Grounds. The community settled there and has reconstructed
a small, typically Orya village with mud huts decorated with geometric designs. Dalima is still very active, although she
complains more and more about the effects of the severe fractures to her legs.

D
R
. S
ARKAR
—The heroic doctor of the Railway Colony was found at death’s door in the stationmaster’s office. Since then he has suffered
from a chronic cough and frequent attacks of suffocation. For years, he was convinced that pockets of gas left behind by the
toxic cloud were still poisoning people. He retired in Bhopal, where he lives surrounded by his children.

D
R
. A
SHU
SATPATHY—The rose enthusiast and pathologist, who performed the first autopsies on the victims on the night of the tragedy,
is now head of the department of forensic medicine at the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal. He still grows roses, which he
sends to all the Indian flower shows. Affected by the gases that had impregnated the clothing on the corpses, he now suffers
from breathing difficulties. Because he did not live in the area hit by the toxic cloud, he never received any compensation.

V.K. S
HERMA
—The courageous deputy stationmaster who saved hundreds of passengers by making the Gorakhpur Express leave the Bhopal station,
now lives in the suburbs of Bhopal. His injuries have turned him into an almost total invalid. His breathing is so labored
that he can scarcely speak. The slightest physical effort causes terrible attacks of suffocation. The government paid him
35,000 rupees, a little over $740.

A
RJUN
S
INGH
—The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, who dispensed property deeds to the occupants of the poor neighborhoods bordering on
the Union Carbide factory, won the elections in February 1985 and became one of India’s most powerful politicians. Appointed
vice president of the Congress party by Rajiv Gandhi, he was made a central government minister several times. He has lost
his seat in the New Delhi parliament. He now divides his time between the capital and Bhopal where he has had a sumptuous
residence built on the shores of the Upper Lake.

M
OHAN
L
AL
V
ARMA
—The operator, accused of sabotage by Union Carbide, was never charged. Today he lives some sixty miles from Bhopal and works
for Madhya Pradesh’s industries department.

W
ARREN
W
OOMER
—The American engineer who supervised the training of the beautiful plant’s Indian engineers at Institute, is now living with
his wife Betty in South Charleston. His house overlooks the Kanawha Valley. When Woomer goes out for a walk, he can see the
outline of the Institute factory, where the tanks invariably contain several dozen tons of methyl isocyanate. Woomer has just
written a history of Union Carbide’s industrial presence at Institute. He has remained a consultant for the factory, which
now belongs to the Franco-German chemical company Aventis.

Solidarity Work that Dominique Lapierre
has Undertaken in Calcutta, Rural Bengal,
Ganges Delta, Madras and Bhopal

Thanks to royalties and my fees as a writer, journalist and lecturer, and thanks to the generosity of my readers and friends
who support the organization I founded in 1982, it has been possible to initiate or maintain the following humanitarian work:

1. The assumption of complete and continuing financial responsibility for taking care, at the Udayan-Resurrection home in
Barrachpore near Calcutta, of three hundred young boys and girls who have suffered from leprosy.

2. The assumption of total and continuing financial responsibility for 125 handicapped children in the Mohitnagar and Maria
Basti homes, near Jalpaiguri.

3. The construction and equipment of the Backwabari home for severely mentally and physically disabled children.

4. The extension and reorganization of the Ekprantanagar home in a destitute suburb of Calcutta, which provides shelter for
140 children of seasonal workers at the brick kilns. The installation of a source of clean drinking water has transformed
the living conditions in this home.

5. The creation of a school near the Ekprantanagar home to educate both the 140 children who live there and 350 very poor
children from the nearby slums.

6. The reconstruction of several hundred huts for families who have lost everything in the cyclones that have hit the Ganges
Delta.

7. The assumption of total financial responsibility for the Banghar SHIS medical center and its program to eradicate tuberculosis,
which reaches out to more than two thousand villages. (Program staff holds nearly 100,000 consultations annually.) The installation
of X-ray equipment in the main dispensary and the creation of several subsidiary medical centers and mobile units providing
diagnostic X-rays, vaccinations, medical treatment and nutritional care.

8. The establishment of four medical units in the isolated villages of the Ganges Delta, which provide vaccinations, treatment
for tuberculosis, programs in preventative medicine, patient education and family planning, as well as “eye camps” to restore
sight to patients with cataracts.

9. The sinking of tube wells for drinking water and the construction of latrines in several hundred villages in the Ganges
Delta.

10. The launching of four floating dispensary-boats in the Ganges Delta to bring medical aid to the one million isolated inhabitants
of fifty-four islands.

11. In Belari, the assumption of financial responsibility for a rural medical center that serves more than 90,000 patients
a year from hamlets devoid of any medical care; the construction and assumption of responsibility for the ABC center for physically
and mentally handicapped children; the construction of a village for 100 destitute or abandoned mothers and children; with
a home where mentally sick women are taken care of.