Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [10]
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.
3
A Neighborhood Called Orya Bustee
After 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