21.
The First Deadly Drops from the "Beautiful Plant"
No plaque commemorates the day when the t.i.tanic was launched with a bottle of champagne before plowing through the waves for the very first time. Nor does any history book make reference to May 4, 1980, the date that the first factory exported from the West to make pesticides using methyl isocyanate began production. Yet for the men who had built it, that day was "cause for jubilation" as one of them would later say. Thirteen years after Eduardo Muoz"s gray Jaguar had first pulled up to the Kali Grounds, a dream was coming true.
With speeches, the handing out of gifts, garlands and sweets, the company with the blue-and-white logo had a.s.sembled several hundred guests under multicolored shamianas to mark the occasion. Dignitaries, ministers, senior civil servants, directors of the company, personnel from the various units- ranging from the foreman to the humblest operator-stood together at the foot of this remarkable structure. The engineers, both American and Indian, made no secret of their delight and relief at having surmounted the obstacles of a long and difficult process.
The new CEO of Union Carbide had come over from the United States especially for the event. Tall, athletic-looking, with a white plastic safety helmet atop his thick gray hair, Warren Anderson towered above the a.s.sembly. The son of a humble Swedish carpenter who had immigrated to Brooklyn, at fifty-nine he epitomized the fulfillment of the American dream. Equipped with a degree in chemistry and another in law, in thirty-five years he had climbed the ladder to the top of the world"s third largest chemical giant. The empire he now ran comprised seven hundred plants employing 117,000 people in thirty-eight countries. For this pa.s.sionate fisherman who loved gardening at his Connecticut home, the birth of the Bhopal plant was a decisive step toward his life"s princ.i.p.al objective. Anderson wanted to turn Union Carbide into a company with a human face, a firm in which respect for moral values would carry as much weight as the rise of its shares on the stock market. Thanks to the Sevin that the Carbide teams were going to manufacture here, tens of thousands of peasants could protect their families from the ancestral curse of starvation. With a garland of marigolds around his neck, Warren Anderson had every reason to be proud and happy. This plant was a triumphant step in his remarkable career.
Getting the installation up and running had involved three challenging months of intensive preparation. Finding and training technicians in the heart of India who could cope with any emergency had been no easy matter. There were eighty entries on the list of possible problems, many of them extremely serious.
"You don"t launch such a complex plant like you turn the ignition key in a car," Pareek would explain. "We were dealing with a kind of metal dinosaur, complete with its bad temper, its whims, its weaknesses and its birth deformities. Waking up a monster like that and bringing it to life, with its hundreds of miles of piping, its thousands of valves, joints, pumps, reactors, tanks and instruments was a task worthy of the building of the pyramids."
It began with a rigorous check of the sealing of all circuits. The pipework was flushed repeatedly with nitrogen. To detect any leaks in the connecting joints, safety valves, pressure gauges and sluices were smeared with a soapy coating. The smallest bubble alerted the operators. Next, one by one, all the hundreds of bolts that held together the various pieces of equipment had to be tightened. Once the system was determined to be functioning correctly, the engineers began heating up the two gases, which, when brought together, would produce methyl isocyanate. These two components-phosgene and monomethylamine-had themselves been obtained by combining other substances. As the temperature of the gases rose, the operators opened up the circuits one by one. The few privileged people present in the control room held their breath. The fateful moment was approaching. John Luke Couvaras checked the dials on the reactors" temperature and pressure gauges. Then he cried, "Go!" Whereupon an operator activated a circuit that sent the phosgene and the monomethylamine into the same steel cylinder. The combination produced a gaseous reaction. This gas was at once cooled down again, purified and liquefied. Then came a burst of applause. Six years after setting off an atomic explosion, India had just produced its first drops of methyl isocyanate.
"We weren"t able to see the first trickle of MIC," Pareek later recalled, "because it went straight into the holding chamber. But as soon as the chamber was full we put on our protective suits to take a sample of a few centiliters of the liquid. I carried the container with as much respect as if it had been a statue of Durga to the laboratory to have the contents a.n.a.lyzed. We were thrilled at the result. Our Indian MIC was as pure a vintage as Kanawha Valley"s!"
While Union Carbide"s tanks were filling up, a celebration of a very different kind was going on at the southern boundary of the Kali Grounds. Belram Mukkadam, Rahul, Ganga Ram, Ratna Nadar and many of the other residents of Orya Bustee gathered around the five horned beasts the cattle merchant had just delivered. With the compensation money paid out by Carbide, Mukkadam had decided to replace his cow Parvati with a bull. He called it Nandi, after the bull the G.o.d Shiva had taken as his mount because it kept all danger and evil at bay. That night, by the light of the full moon, he marked the animal"s forehead with the trident of the G.o.d. It was an emblem that augured well. Mukkadam was sure it would guarantee the fertility of the new herd and ensure divine protection on the Kali Grounds" bustees.
22.
Three Tanks Dressed up for a Carnival By appointing one of its best men to the helm of the Indian pesticide plant, the American multinational was signaling the degree of control it expected to exercise over the Bhopal installation. Modest, almost timid-looking behind his thick gla.s.ses, Warren Woomer was one of Carbide"s most experienced and respected engineers. Moreover, he was familiar with India and Bhopal after having carried out two a.s.signments there. He had helped get up the unit that produced alpha naphthol, a substance used in the composition of Sevin. And he also had been instrumental in the launching of the Sevin plant, checking to be certain that his Indian colleagues were correctly applying everything he had taught them at Inst.i.tute.
Being an American in charge of a thousand Indians of different origins, castes, religions and languages was the toughest challenge of his career. Woomer began with a detailed inspection of the ship.
"I couldn"t find anything fundamental at fault," he would recall. "Of course the control room would seem obsolete to us now, but at the time it was the best that India could produce. I noticed nothing really shocking about either the design or the functioning of the plant. In any case my bible was the MIC manual of use with its forty pages of instructions. Every one of them was to be treated as Gospel truth, especially the directive to keep the MIC in the storage tanks at a temperature close to zero degrees Celsius. On this point I had decided to be intractable. Yes, it was imperative that every single drop of MIC was kept at zero degrees. What"s more, my long honeymoon with some of the most dangerous chemical substances made me add one recommendation to the MIC manual of use. I considered it vitally important: only stock a minimum quant.i.ty of methyl isocyanate on site."
Although he had encountered no problems at a technical level, Woomer still realized that many things could be improved, notably the way in which staff members performed their tasks.
"For example, no one took the precaution of wearing safety goggles," he would remember. "One day I put my hand over one of the operator"s eyes. "That"s how your children and grandchildren are likely to see your face if you don"t protect your eyes," I told him severely. The story did the rounds of the plant and, next day, I found everyone wearing safety goggles. I realized then that in India you had to touch people through the heart."
There were plenty of other problems in store for the new captain. Firstly, how was he to remember the unp.r.o.nounceable names of so many of his colleagues?
"Sathi," he said one day to his secretary, "you"re going to teach me the correct p.r.o.nunciation of the first and last names of everyone working in the plant, including those of their wives and children. And I"d like you to point out any mistakes I make because of my ignorance of the ways and customs of your country."
"Sahb," * the young woman replied, "in India, employees don"t tell their bosses what to do."
"I"m not asking you to tell me what to do," replied Woomer sharply. "I"m asking you to help me be as good a boss as possible."
Warren Woomer was to discover, often at personal cost, the extreme subtlety of relationships in Indian society, where every individual occupies a special place in a myriad of hierarchies.
"I learned never to make a remark to anyone in the presence of his superior," he would say. "I learned never to announce a decision without everyone having had the chance to express a view so that it appeared to be the result of a collective choice. But, above all, I learned who Rama was, who Ganesh, Vishnu and Shiva were; what events the festivals of Moharam or Ishtema commemorated; who Guru Nanak was and who was the G.o.d of work my employees worshipped so ardently and whose name was so difficult to remember."
The G.o.d Warren Woomer could not remain ignorant of was Vishvakarma, one of the giants in the Hindu pantheon. In Indian mythology he personifies creative power, and the sacred texts glorify him as the "architect of the universe, the all-seeing G.o.d who disposes of all the worlds, gives the divinities their names and exists beyond mortal comprehension." He is also the one who fashions the weapons and tools of the G.o.ds. He is lord of the arts and carpenter of the cosmos, builder of the celestial chariots and creator of all ornaments. That is why he is the tutelary G.o.d of artisans and patron of all the crafts that enable humankind to subsist.
Every year after the September moon, his effigy is borne triumphantly into all workplaces-from the smallest workroom to the largest factory. This is a privileged time of communication between bosses and workers, when celebrations unite rich and poor in shared worship and prayer.
Overnight the reactors, pumps and distillation columns of the Bhopal plant were decorated with wreaths of jasmine and marigold in honor of Vishvakarma. The three great tanks due to contain tens of thousands of gallons of MIC were draped in fabrics of many colors, making them look like carnival floats. The vast Sevin formulation unit, where the festivities were to be held, was covered in carpets and its walls were decorated with streamers and garlands of flowers. Workmen brought cases full of hammers, nails, pliers and hundreds of other tools, which they deposited on the ground and decorated with foliage and flowers. Others set up the colossal altar in which the statue of the G.o.d would be installed on a cushion of rose petals. Riding on his elephant covered by a cloth encrusted with precious stones, Vishvakarma looked like a maharajah. He wore a tunic embroidered with gold thread and studded with jewels. One could tell he was not a human being in that he had wings and four arms brandishing an ax, a hammer, a bow and a balance. Several hundred engineers, machine operators, foremen and workmen, most accompanied by their wives and children, and all dressed in their festival clothes, soon filled the work floor. Squatting barefoot in this sea of humanity, Warren and Betty Woomer, the only foreigners, watched the colorful ceremony with astonishment and respect.
After intoning mantras into a microphone, a pandit with a shaven head placed the sacred objects on a thali, a ritual silver plate. First the purifying fire-burning oil in a clay dish-then rose petals, a few small b.a.l.l.s of sweet pastry, a handful of rice and finally the sindoor, a little pile of scarlet powder. Ringing his small bell vigorously, the pandit blessed the collection of tools laid out by the workers. A solitary voice then rang out, promptly followed by a hundred others. "Vishvakarma kijai! Long live Vishvakarma!" That was the signal. The ceremony was over and the festivities could commence. The management of the factory had arranged for a banquet of meat curry and vegetables, la.s.si and puri, little cakes of fried wheat puffed up into balloons, to be prepared in a nearby kitchen. Beer and palm wine flowed like water. The alarm system"s loudspeakers poured out a stentorian flood of popular tunes and firecrackers went off on all sides. Employers and employees gave themselves up to celebration.
Like most of those in charge of the beautiful plant, Warren and Betty Woomer were not aware that the occupants of the neighboring bustees were gathered with similar fervor around the G.o.d of tools. There was, after all, an extraordinary concentration of workers in those areas, too. The workshops belonging to the shoemaker Iqbal, the sari embroiderer Ahmed Ba.s.si and the bicycle repairman Salar, were just three small links in a whole chain of workplaces in which devotees of Vishvakarma labored in order to survive. In Jai Prakash and Chola, children supported their families by cutting up sheets of bra.s.s to make tools, or dipping fountain pen caps in chrome baths that gave off noxious fumes. Elsewhere, youngsters slowly poisoned themselves making matches and firecrackers, handling phosphorous, zinc oxide and asbestos powder. In poorly ventilated workshops that smelled of burning oil and overheated metal, emaciated men laminated, soldered and fitted pieces of iron-work together. A few paces away from the s.p.a.cious house belonging to the Sikh moneylender Pulpul Singh, a dozen men sitting cross-legged made bidis. Nearly all of them suffered from tuberculosis and thus lacked the strength to pedal a rickshaw or pull a tilagari, a hand cart. Provided they did not stop for a single minute, they could roll up to thirteen hundred cigarettes a day. Every evening a tharagar would come from the town to collect what they had produced. For one thousand bidis, they received twelve rupees, the price of two kilos of rice.
How surprised Chairman Anderson and his works manager Warren Woomer would have been if ever they had chanced upon those places where so many men and children spent their lives making springs, truck parts, axles for weaving looms, bolts, gas tanks and even turbine gears to the tenth of a micron; men and children, who with a surprising degree of dexterity, inventiveness and resourcefulness, could produce, copy, repair or renovate any part or machine. Here the smallest sc.r.a.p of metal, the lowliest bit of debris was reused, transformed, adapted. Here nothing was ever thrown away. Everything was always re-born, as if by some miracle.
In antic.i.p.ation of the festival, labor had stopped in the workshops on the previous day, and everyone had scrambled to clean, repaint and adorn the rooms with garlands of foliage and flowers. The workers of Orya, Chola and Jai Prakash also made the G.o.d of tools proud.
In the s.p.a.ce of one night, h.e.l.lholes had been transformed into places of worship strewn with flowers and adorned with sumptuously decorated temporary altars. The traditional chromo of the four-armed G.o.d perched on his elephant was everywhere. Yesterday"s slaves had changed into gleaming shirts and brand new lunghis; their wives had got out their festival saris, preserved in the family coffers from the greed of the c.o.c.kroaches. The children were equally resplendent. The entire local population squeezed in behind a bra.s.s and drum band whose flourishes resounded through the alleyways. The G.o.dfather Omar Pasha was present, with a wife on either side of him, each dressed up like a queen in a silk sari that Ahmed Ba.s.si had embroidered and encrusted with pearls. The Muslim tailor was there as well, for the festivities transcended all religious differences. With his crony the goateed mullah beside him, the sorcerer Nilamber, who was acting as pandit, led the procession from workshop to workshop, saying mantras and blessing the tools with purifying fire. Behind him, Padmini walked proudly, in a long dress made out of scarlet cotton, a gift from Sister Felicity. The young Indian girl had persuaded the nun to join in the celebrations. When they spotted the cross around the sister"s neck, many of the workers asked her to come and bless their tools in the name of her G.o.d. "Praise to you, oh G.o.d of the universe, who gives our daily bread, for your children in Orya Bustee, Chola and Jai Prakash love and believe in you," Sister Felicity repeated fervently in each workshop. "And rejoice with them at this day of light in all the hardship of their lives."
23.
"Half a Million Hours of Work and Not a Day Lost"
The City of the Begums could not help but bless the chairman of Carbide. No other industrial enterprise housed within Bhopal"s ancient walls had been quite so concerned about its image; no other was quite so solicitous toward its staff. Each day brought new examples of this extraordinary behavior. In the plant, Muslim workers had a place of prayer facing Mecca; Hindus had little altars dedicated to their princ.i.p.al G.o.ds. During the Hindu festival in honor of the G.o.ddess Durga, the management gave the workers a generator to light her richly decorated statue. The material advantages were no less plentiful. A special fund enabled employees to borrow money for weddings and festivals. The insurance and pension plans put the factory ahead of most Indian firms. A canteen, accessible to all, dispensed meals for a token price of two rupees.
In accordance with what they had been taught in Inst.i.tute, however, it was the safety of their staff that was the prime concern of the plant management. Carbide equipped Bhopal"s Hamidia Hospital with ultramodern resuscitation equipment, which could treat several victims of gas poisoning simultaneously. The gift was greeted with public celebrations widely reported in the press. In addition a hospital infirmary stocked with respiratory equipment, a radiology unit and a laboratory, was built at the very entrance to the site. "We were convinced all these precautions were unnecessary," Kamal Pareek said afterward, "but they were part of the safety culture with which we had been inculcated." Yet this same culture accommodated some surprising deficiencies. The medical staff that Carbide hired did not have any specific training in the effects of gas-related accidents, especially those caused by methyl isocyanate.
It fell to the young a.s.sistant manager for safety to share what he had learned at Inst.i.tute with over a thousand men, most of whom were almost oblivious to the dangers they faced every day. "Making people appreciate the danger was virtually impossible," Pareek would recount. "It"s in the nature of a chemical plant for the danger to be invisible. How can you instill fear into people without showing them the danger?" Meetings to inform people, emergency exercises, poster campaigns, safety demonstrations in which families took part, slogan compet.i.tions ... Pareek and his superior were constantly devising new ways of awakening everyone"s survival instinct. Soon, Warren Woomer was able to send a victory report to his headquarters in America: "We are pleased to announce that half a million hours have been worked without losing a single day."
Safety, Pareek knew, also depended upon a certain number of specific devices, such as the alarm system with which the plant was equipped. At the slightest intimation of fire or the smallest emission of toxic gas, the duty supervisor in the control room had orders to set off a general alarm siren. At the same time loudspeakers would inform personnel, first in English, then in Hindi, of the precise nature of the gas, the exact location of the leak and the direction in which the wind was blowing. This last piece of information was supplied by a wind sock at the top of a mast outside the MIC unit. In case of a major leak, staff would receive an order to evacuate the site without panic, according to the practice drills Pareek regularly organized.
All the same, this alarm system was only intended to warn the crews working on the factory site. Though nearby residents could hear the alarm, none of the loudspeakers pointed outward in the direction of the bustees where thousands of potential victims were packed together. "From the moment I got there, the proximity of all those people was one of my major worries," Warren Woomer would admit. "Every evening I would have our guards move away those setting up camp right along our fence. Sometimes some of them would even get over the wall, and we would have all the difficulty in the world getting them out. The plant had such magnetic appeal! So many people wanted to get a job there! That"s what drew them nearer and nearer."
One day Woomer decided to intervene personally with the munic.i.p.al authorities to get them to force people to "move as far away as possible" from his installations. His efforts failed. None of the authorities appeared disposed to launch another eviction operation against the Kali Grounds squatters. Woomer proposed drawing up a plan to evacuate people in case of a major incident. The very idea of such a plan drew immediate resistance from the highest level of the Madhya Pradesh government. The people of Bhopal might panic, or worse yet, leave-a possibility that Arjun Singh, the state"s chief minister, found wholly unacceptable. The elections were approaching and he needed every possible vote, no matter where it came from. The portly Omar Pasha, his electoral agent in the three bustees, was already campaigning on his behalf. Astute politician that he was, he had antic.i.p.ated everything to ensure his reelection. Not only would he prevent the expulsion of his electors, but he would win their votes by offering them the most spectacular present they could ever hope to receive.
The scene that engineer Kamal Pareek imagined one day was like a clip from a horror movie. The metal in one of the pipelines had cracked, allowing a flood of methyl isocyanate to escape. Because the accident was not the kind of leak the safety equipment could contain, the ensuing tragedy was unstoppable. A deadly cloud of MIC was going to spread through the factory, then into the atmosphere. The idea for this disastrous scenario came to Pareek as he watched a train packed with pa.s.sengers come to a halt on the railway line that ran between the factory and the bustees. Would it be possible for a cloud of MIC driven by the wind to hit those hundreds of poor wretches trapped in their railway cars? the engineer wanted to know. He went to Nagpur, former capital of the Central Provinces, and presented himself at India"s national meteorological headquarters. Its archives contained records of meteorological studies carried out in India"s princ.i.p.al cities for the last quarter of a century: temperatures, hygrometric and barometric pressures, air density, wind intensity and direction and so on. All this information was recorded on voluminous rolls of paper. After a week spent compiling data, the engineer was able to extract from this ocean a ma.s.s of information about the meteorological conditions peculiar to Bhopal. For example, in 75 percent of the cases, the winds blew from north to east at a speed of between six and twenty miles an hour. The average temperature in December was 15 C by day but only 7 C at night.
Pareek packed this paperwork in a cardboard box and dispatched it swiftly to the safety department at Union Carbide in South Charleston to have it simulated on the computer. Taking into account the meteorological conditions prevalent in Bhopal, the technicians into the U.S. would be able to tell whether or not the toxic cloud of his scenario was likely to hit the train that had stopped next to the bustees. The reply came back three days later in the guise of a short telex. "It is not possible, even under the worst conditions, that the toxic cloud will hit the railway line. It will pa.s.s over it."
"It will pa.s.s over it ..." the engineer repeated several times, catching his breath. A vision of horror pa.s.sed before his eyes. "My G.o.d," he thought, "so the cloud would hit the bustees."
The vigorous games of tennis Warren Woomer played every morning before going to his office reflected his ebullient morale. The Bhopal plant"s top man had every reason to be satisfied. After a mediocre first year, the production and sales of Sevin had taken off. In 1981, they reached 2,704 tons: half the factory"s capacity but 30 percent more than Eduardo Muoz"s most optimistic predictions. Despite this success, however, the beautiful plant had some problems. The most serious arose from the alpha-naphthol production unit. The installation designed by Indian engineers had never, despite several modifications, been able to supply a product that was pure enough. They had therefore to resign themselves to importing alpha naphthol directly from Inst.i.tute in the United States. In the end this fiasco would cost Carbide $8 million, 40 percent of the original budget for the entire construction.
There had been an earlier misfortune. In 1978 a fire had devastated part of the unit. The gigantic column of black smoke that hid the sun before raining down foul-smelling particles on roofs and terraces had been Carbide"s first gloomy signature in the sky over Bhopal. Seeing this incredible spectacle from his house, a young journalist by the name of Rajk.u.mar Keswani rushed to the scene of the disaster, only to find that the area had already been cordoned off by hundreds of policemen. No one was allowed near.
Nevertheless, four years after this accident, Carbide"s star continued to shine in the firmament over the City of the Begums. The guest house"s panoramic restaurant overlooking the town had become the favorite meeting place of the political establishment and local society. Those who dined there would never forget the extravagant spectacles that formed the after-dinner entertainment, like the water ballet in the swimming pool that the wife of the managing director of Carbide"s Indian subsidiary, herself an accomplished dancer and swimmer, had arranged. The initiated knew that this luxurious residence was also used for top-secret meetings. Carbide had placed a suite at the permanent disposal of the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. In Bhopal, as elsewhere, money and power made comfortable bedfellows.
24.
Everlasting Roots in the Black Earth of the Kali Grounds The word traveled from hut to shed to stall to workshop like a trail of gunpowder. The residents of the three bustees were to gather on the teahouse esplanade for a meeting of the utmost importance.
"This is it. Carbide"s taking us all on!" shouted Ganga Ram, who had never got over being rejected because of his mutilated hands.
"In your dreams, you poor fool!" said the shoemaker Iqbal, ever the pessimist. "It"s to inform us we"re going to be evicted. And this time, it"ll be for good!"
The arrival of Dalima on her crutches interrupted the exchange. With a yellow marigold in her hair and gla.s.s bangles jangling about her wrists, the young cripple had a triumphant air about her.
"It"s to tell us they"re going to install a drinking water supply with taps!" she announced.
"Why, it"s obvious," said old Prema Bai, "they need us for the elections."
In India, like anywhere else, it was the womenfolk who showed the most common sense.
That was when a voice from a loudspeaker rent the sky.
"People of Orya Bustee, Jai Prakash and Chola, hurry up!" it commanded.
The residents of the bustees rushed from the alleyways toward the teahouse esplanade. Sister Felicity, who was in the process of giving several children polio vaccinations, paused.
"It"s like being at home in Scotland when a storm breaks," she told Padmini. "All the sheep start running toward the voice that"s calling them."
Padmini, who had never seen sheep, made an effort to imagine the scene. At that point Rahul, the legless cripple appeared.
"Padmini! Run to the factory and tell your father and the others. Ask him to round everyone up." Suddenly a.s.suming the mysterious air of one who knew more, he whispered, "I think our state"s precious chief minister has a surprise for us."
The young girl set off for the factory at a run. Everywhere the sweatshop slaves were abandoning their tools and their machines to make for the grand gathering. As they arrived, Belram Mukkadam, his stick waving madly, directed them to sit down. Soon the entire esplanade was covered by a human sea.
A truck appeared. It was loaded with posters that Mukkadam immediately hung all around the teahouse. On most of them people recognized the balding forehead, fleshy lips and thick gla.s.ses of the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Other posters depicted an open hand. In the same way that Shiva had a trident as his emblem, and the religion of Islam its crescent, the Congress party, of which Arjun Singh was one of the leading lights, had chosen as its symbol the wide open palm of a hand. The truck was also carrying a collection of small fliers, which Rahul, Ganga Ram and others busied themselves distributing. "WE LOVE YOU, ARJUN!" they said. "ARJUN, YOU ARE OUR SAVIOUR! ARJUN, BHOPAL NEEDS YOU!" Some went so far as to proclaim: "ARJUN, INDIA WANTS YOU!"
Delayed in New Delhi with Indira Gandhi, the organizer of this incredible show had entrusted his official representative in the Kali Grounds" bustees to see that the display served his electoral interests. The fact that the guest of honor was missing made the spectacle all the more quaint, for the proceedings began with the solemn arrival of an empty armchair. Carried by two servants in dhotis, the august seat came directly from Omar Pasha"s drawing room. Encrusted with mother of pearl and ivory, it looked more like a throne. A few minutes later, a gleaming Amba.s.sador brought the chief minister"s representative. In honor of the occasion, Omar Pasha was wearing the most legendary crown in India"s history, the white cap of those who had fought for independence. Thirty-eight years after the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the G.o.dfather of the bustees knew that the white cap was still a powerful symbol.
At a respectful distance behind the old man walked Omar Pasha"s son Ashoka, a tall fellow with a shaven head, whom the inhabitants of the bustees had learned to fear and respect. Manager of the clandestine drink trade controlled by his father, today he carried neither alcohol nor hashish, but a small ebony chest sealed with a copper lock. Inside this casket was a treasure, possibly the most valuable treasure the occupants of Orya Bustee, Chola and Jai Prakash could hope to receive.
Omar Pasha sat down on his throne, in front of which Mukkadam had placed a cloth-covered table, bearing a bouquet of flowers and incense sticks. Because of the brightness of the sun, the G.o.dfather"s eyes were hidden behind dark gla.s.ses, but people could tell what he was thinking by the way he wrinkled his eyebrows. Mukkadam called for a microphone, which the visitor seized between pudgy fingers dripping with gold and ruby rings.
"My friends!" he exclaimed in a strong voice that forty years of drinking and smoking had not managed to roughen. "I have come to deliver to you, on behalf of our revered chief minister Arjun Singh."
At this name, Omar Pasha paused, sending a tremble through the a.s.sembly bristling with posters. Someone shouted: "Arjun Singh, ki jai!" but the cry was not taken up. The crowd was impatient to hear the rest of the speech.
"At the request of our chief minister," the G.o.dfather continued, "I have come to deliver to you your patta! * "
The echo of this unbelievable, supernatural, unhoped for word hovered in the overheated air for interminably long seconds. Surveying the stunned crowd, Sister Felicity could not help thinking of a sentence by the Catholic writer Leon Bloy: "You don"t enter paradise tomorrow, or in ten years time. You enter it today when you are poor and crucified."
Since the dawn of India"s history that mythical word, "patta" had haunted the dreams of millions of disenfranchised people. It had fired the hopes of all those who, in order to survive, had had no alternative but to set up their hovel wherever they could. The people who had ended up in the Kali Grounds were among those poor unfortunates: those people, whom Indira Gandhi"s son had tried forcibly to drive away, the people whom the works manager of an American plant dreaded seeing encamped against its walls, had for years been clinging desperately to the pitiful patch of dust that Belram Mukkadam had once traced out for them with his stick. And there, suddenly, was the G.o.dfather bringing them official property deeds issued by the government of Madhya Pradesh recognizing their right to occupy their miserable piece of squattered land.
It was too good to be true. Never mind the fact that this deed would have to be renewed in thirty years" time, never mind the fact that it was officially forbidden to p.a.w.n it or sell it, never mind the fact that their owners would be taxed thirty-four rupees each year. A frenzied cheer went up from the crowd, which rose to its feet in a single movement. People chanted the names of the chief minister, Omar Pasha and Indira Gandhi. They danced, they laughed, and congratulated one another. Caught up in a surge, Padmini suddenly found herself raised above the surrounding heads like a figurehead, the fragile emblem of a people throwing off its chains and achieving the beginnings of dignity. As far as these illiterate men, women and children were concerned, the pieces of paper Omar Pasha pulled from his chest were a gift from the G.o.ds. These deeds would remove their fears for good by allowing them to plant their roots forever in the welcoming ground, over which fluttered the flag with the blue-and-white logo.
Every time Omar Pasha invited a beneficiary to come and collect the doc.u.ment inscribed with his name and the designation of his plot, a bearded character sitting at the back wagged his head and rubbed at his enormous eyebrows. For the Sikh Pulpul Singh, the neighborhood usurer, this was a fortune on a plate, an opportunity to increase his wealth, even if it would mean breaking the law against p.a.w.ning the deeds. Pulpul Singh could already see each sheet of paper that came out of the G.o.dfather"s chest winding its way into his own safe. The day would come that these poor people would need to borrow money from him, and what better guarantee could he ask for than the deposit of those magical deeds, which he could always find a way of selling at a profit?
Part Two.
A NIGHT BLESSED BY THE STARS.
25.
A Gas That Makes You Laugh Before It Kills You.
With his thick mustache, bushy eyebrows and round cheeks, the thirty-two-year-old Muslim Mohammed Ashraf was the mirror image of the Indian cinema idol Shashi Kapoor. The resemblance had made him the most popular worker in the plant. In charge of a shift in the phosgene unit, on that December 23, 1981, Ashraf had to carry out a routine maintenance operation. It was a matter of replacing a defective f.l.a.n.g.e between two pieces of pipework.
"No need to put your kit on today," he announced to his colleague Harish Khan, indicating the heavy rubber coat hanging on a hook in the cloakroom. "The factory isn"t running. There"s no likelihood of a leak."
"Gases can walk about even when everything"s stopped," Khan retorted sharply. "Better be on the safe side. A few drops of that blasted phosgene on your pullover can hurt you. It"s not like the bangla from Mukkadam"s teahouse!"
The two men burst out laughing.
"I"m willing to bet Mukkadam"s rotgut is even more dangerous than this b.l.o.o.d.y phosgene," Ashraf said, donning his mask.
No one had ever had cause to reproach the Muslim operator for any breach of safety procedures. Ashraf was one of the most reliable technicians in the company, even if he did leave his workstation five times a day to go out into the courtyard and pray on his little mat facing Mecca, and even if he did come staggering to work in the morning because he had spent all night fishing on the banks of Upper Lake. The son of a small trader in the bazaar, he owed everything to Carbide, not least his marriage to the daughter of a cloth merchant from Kanpur, who was honored to have an employee of the prestigious multinational for his son-in-law, even if he was only a low-level employee. A graduate in economics, Sajda Bano was a beautiful young woman. She had given him two sons, Arshad and Soeb, in whom he could already see two prospective "Carbiders."