Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [112]
The vapors that reached the areas closest to the factory poisoned at random along the way, but the smell of boiled cabbage, freshly cut grass and ammonia covered the entire area in a matter of seconds. No sooner had Belram Mukkadam spotted the cloud, than he felt its effects. Realizing that death was about to strike, he yelled, “Bachao! Bachao! Get out of here!” The wedding guests were immediately seized with panic and ran off in all directions.
For Bablubhai, it was already too late. Orya Bustee’s dairyman would never again bring milk to children suffering from rickets. When Nandi the bull died, he rushed from the banquet to his stable where he could hear his buffalo cows bellowing to him. The seventeen beasts were lying down when they were hit head-on by a small blanket of gas moving along at ground level. Several had already succumbed. Devastated, Bablubhai ran to his hut to check on his newborn son and wife Boda.
“The oil lamp has gone out,” murmured the young woman tearfully.
Bablubhai bent over to grab his child. A gust of vapor caught him there. It paralyzed the dairyman’s breathing instantaneously and he was struck down in a faint over the body of his lifeless baby.
Similar respiratory paralysis overtook several of the other guests in midflight. Another small greenish cloud laden with hydrocyanic acid drifted into old Prema Bai’s hut. It killed the midwife outright, as she lay on her charpoy. She and many of the other guests had sought refuge in their homes. In the hut next door, Prodip and Shunda, Padmini’s grandparents, also succumbed in seconds. Of all the gases making up the toxic mass, hydrocyanic acid was one of the deadliest. It blocked the action of the enzymes carrying oxygen from the blood to the brain, causing immediate death.
One of the first victims of this creeping layer of gas was the cripple Rahul on his wheeled plank. Because of his robust constitution, he did not die right away but only after several minutes of agony. He coughed, choked and spewed up blackish clots. His muscles shook with spasms, his features contorted, he tore off his necklaces and his shirt, groaning and gasping for something to drink, then finally toppled from his board and dragged himself along the ground in a last effort to breathe. The man who had always been such a tireless source of moral support to the community, who had so frequently appeased the fears of his companions in misfortune, was dead.
Awakened with a start by all the yelling and shouting, those who had been asleep rushed panic-stricken out of their huts. For the first time Muslim women emerged with their faces uncovered. From out of all the alleyways came small carts laden with old people and children. Very soon, however, the men pulling them suffocated and collapsed. Unable to get back on their feet, they lay sprawled in their own vomit. Little girls and boys who were lost, fastened on to passing fugitives and bicycles. Many of the residents of Chola and Jai Prakash bustees took refuge in the small temple to the monkey god Hanuman, or in the little mosque that was soon overflowing with distressed people. In their panic, men and women left other family members behind in their huts. Ironically, their activity was often their own undoing, while those left behind were in many instances recovered alive. The gas claimed more victims among those obliged to breathe deeply because they were moving, than those who kept still.
Others, such as the shoemaker Iqbal and the tailor Bassi made sure, before they fled, that no one was left behind in any of the homes in their alleyway. That was how