Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [106]
When their eyes began to smart, the six men sitting less than forty yards from the tanks, finally conceded that their colleague Varma was right. It was not the smell of Flytox he had detected, but indeed the characteristic boiled cabbage odor of methyl isocyanate. They still did not know, however, what was going on in tank 610.
Qureshi turned to V.N. Singh and Varma. “Guys, you’d better go and do a tour around the rinsing area,” he suggested.
The two technicians picked up their torches, put on their helmets and stood up.
“Don’t forget your masks!” said Qureshi.
“It’s not worth it! It’s not the first time this factory’s smelled of MIC,” replied V.N. Singh. “Have the tea ready for us in a minute!”
“Of course!” Qureshi called.
“And if you’re not back in time we’ll send out a search party with a bottle of oxygen!” joked the Jain from Bombay, provoking general laughter.
In a few minutes, the two men reached the pipework being cleaned. The smell was getting stronger and stronger. They listened to the rushing of the water still circulating at full force through the piping, and directed the beams of their flashlights onto the network of pipes. They scrutinized every stopcock, valve and flange. All of a sudden Singh noticed, at a draincock some eight yards off the ground, a bubble of brownish water surmounted by a small cloud.
“There’s some gas escaping up there!” he shouted.
Varma pointed the beam of his flashlight at the cloud. “You’re right. And it’s not Flytox!”
The two men ran back to the control room.
“Shekil! There’s a pipe pissing MIC!” Singh said. “You should come and take a look.”
Qureshi looked at his colleague in disbelief. “Stop fooling about!” he protested. Then emphasizing each word, he insisted, “Get it into your heads once and for all that there can’t be a leak in a factory where production has been stopped. Any idiot knows that.”
“But it really is pissing out, and it smells very strong!” Singh insisted, rubbing his eyes.
Qureshi shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it’s a drop of residual MIC escaping from the drainage cocks with the rinse water,” he conceded. “All we have to do is turn the water taps off. We’ll see if we can still smell it after that.” With these words he looked at his watch and added, “For now, guys, it’s midnight and time for tea!”
The sacrosanct tea break! Thirty-six years after their colonizers had departed, no Indian, not even the six Carbide men perched atop an erupting volcano, would forego a ritual that had entered their culture as surely as the game of cricket. Qureshi led the team to the building a hundred or so yards away that housed the staff cafeteria. Shortly after midnight, a young Nepalese lad with small, laughing eyes made his appearance. He was the tea boy. In his basket he carried a kettle full of scalding milky tea, some glasses and a plateful of chocolate cookies.
Qureshi and his workmates settled down comfortably to sip the delicious brew steeped in the rich perfume of the distant hills of Assam. Suddenly, a worried face appeared in the doorway. It was Suman Dey, the duty head of the control room.
“Shekil,” he called out to the Muslim supervisor, “the pressure needle for tank 610 has shot up from two to thirty psig!”
Qureshi shrugged his shoulders, then gave his colleague a smile. “Suman, you’re getting in a sweat about nothing! It is your dial that’s gone mad.”
38
Geysers of Death
Stations along the world’s second largest rail network knew nothing about closing for the night. In Bhopal, platform No. 1, the same platform that, a hundred years previously, had greeted the kingdom