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Qureshi tried to allay his colleagues’ fears. They all liked this tall, slightly clumsy fellow, who was always ready to share his inexhaustible repertoire of ghazals. Listening to him sing his poems, the nights did not seem quite so long. They had been pleasantly surprised to find him there that evening, because the roster had not shown him on duty until the next day. At the last minute, however, he had agreed to stand in for a colleague who had been invited to one of the weddings—a very noble gesture on his part on a night when there was a mushaira.

While still carrying on with the discussion, Qureshi cast an eye over the logbook, brought up to date by the previous shift. On the page for tank 610, for the pressure reading for twenty hundred hours, he read, “2 psig.” He gave a smile of satisfaction. Two pounds per square inch of pressure! That meant that all was well inside the tank. The Muslim’s expression darkened, however, when he realized that this information was three hours old. Three hours!

“Before half the technicians were laid off, we used to take pressure and temperature readings every two hours. Now it’s every …”

“Eight hours,” specified Suman Dey who had just emerged from the control room.

An atmosphere of extreme depression prevailed for some time over the metal structures of the factory. Ever since the departure of the men who had given it its soul—Woomer, Dutta, Pareek, Ballal—morale had plummeted, discipline had lapsed and, worst of all, the safety culture had gone out the window. It was rare now for those handling toxic substances to wear their helmets, goggles, masks, boots and gloves. It was even rarer for anyone to go spontaneously in the middle of the night to check the welding on the pipework. Eventually, and insidiously, the most dangerous of ideas had crept in, namely that nothing serious could happen in a factory when all the installations were turned off. As a result, plant workers preferred card games in the site canteen to tours of inspection around the dormant volcano.

“Hey guys! Can you smell it? Hey, can you smell it?” Mohan Lal Varma had sprung to his feet. He sniffed noisily. “Have a sniff, go on! I swear there’s MIC in the air!”

This sudden excitement on the part of the quiet young Hindu provoked much amusement all around.

“Sort out your snoot! Idiot!” cried the Jain from Bombay. “There can’t be any smell of MIC in a factory that’s stopped!”

“It’s not MIC you can smell, it’s Flytox!” interrupted the factory worker from Bihar. “They sprayed a whole canister of it about before we got here!”

“That’s why we haven’t been eaten up by mosquitoes yet!” confirmed the Muslim from Jabalpur.

Everyone in Bhopal agreed: Flytox was a godsend. It was, after all, the miracle insecticide that provided protection against the City of the Begums’ worst scourge: its mosquitoes.

Amid all the hullabaloo of the festivities taking place on the other side of the Kali Grounds, no one noticed a frail young girl dressed in a simple blouse and blue cotton skirt. She threaded her way through the guests preparing to dine on the sisal mats. She approached several of the guests, apparently looking for someone.

“Do you know where Sister Felicity is?” she asked, clearly agitated.

Dalima, who had overheard the question, joined the stranger and scrutinized the faces by the light of the strings of bulbs. The banquet had begun. The men were on one side, the women on the other. Only the bride was missing from the feast. She had momentarily withdrawn to a neighbor’s hut to open her wedding presents. Eventually, Dalima spotted the missionary sitting among a group of women. The young messenger rushed over to her.

“Anita, what are you doing here?” the nun asked, surprised. “Sister, you must come at once! There’s been an accident at home.”

The Scotswoman led Anita to an autorickshaw parked outside the teahouse.

“What is it?” she asked, concerned.

“The little one you have in your room …”

“Nadia?”

“Yes. She had a terrible fit. She