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“But why in Bhopal?” asked Sobha, discovering, to her horror, that blood was trickling from her baby’s lips.

Her husband shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he was going to die and was resigned to it. But as a man of God and despite his pain, he wanted to prepare himself and his family for death.

“Let’s pray before we leave this world,” he said calmly to his wife.

“I’m ready,” the young woman replied.

Although standing required great effort, Father Timothy took his child in his arms and led his wife over to the other side of the courtyard. He wanted to spend his last moments in his church. Placing the infant on a cushion at the foot of the altar, he went and got the bulky copy of the New Testament from which he read to his parishioners each week, and came back to kneel beside his wife and child. He opened to chapter twenty-four of the Gospel of Matthew and recited as loudly as his burning throat would permit. “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come …” Then they drew consolation from the words of the psalmist. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” Timothy read with feeling.

Suddenly, through the stained glass of the small church, there appeared the figure of a savior. With a damp towel plastered over his nose and mouth, Dr. Sarkar signaled to the reverend and his wife to protect themselves in the same way, and come out immediately. There were already five people piled into the doctor’s Ambassador waiting outside the church, but in India there was nothing unusual about that. Timothy Wankhede, who had found Jesus Christ while listening to the radio one day, could put a bookmark at the page of chapter twenty-four of St. Matthew’s gospel. Despite the agony he had endured, which would leave both him and his family with serious aftereffects, his hour had not come yet.

“Your samosas are great!” said Satish Lal, the luggage porter. He and his friend Ratna Nadar were waiting at the end of platform No. 1 for the Gorakhpur Express. Like the ninety-nine other coolies, Lal had polished off the contents of the small cardboard box brought by Padmini’s father.

“They certainly all seemed to have tucked in,” said Nadar, proud to have been able to give his friends a treat.

“I’ll bet you’re going to have to tighten your belt a bit now,” observed Lal. “I can’t imagine Pulpul Singh giving anything away.”

“You can say that again!” confirmed Nadar.

All of a sudden the two men felt a violent irritation in their throats and eyes. A strange smell had just invaded the station. The hundreds of passengers waiting for their trains also felt their throats and eyes become inflamed.

“It’s probably an acid leak from one of the goods wagons,” said Lal, who knew that there were containers of toxic material waiting to be unloaded. “It wouldn’t be the first time!”

Lal was wrong. The toxic cloud from the factory had arrived. It would turn the station into a deathtrap for thousands of travelers.

The two coolies rushed to the stationmaster’s office at the end of the platform. The deputy stationmaster V.K. Sherma was just moving one of the pins on the traffic indicator board. The Gorakhpur Express was approaching Bhopal. It was due to arrive in twenty minutes.

Lal could scarcely speak. “Boss,” he croaked, “something’s going on … people on the platform are coughing their guts out. Come and see!”

The deputy stationmaster and his assistant Paridar left the office but were immediately hit in the face by a pocket of poisonous gas moving at head height. Two or three inhalations were enough to stop any air reaching their lungs. With their ears whistling and their throats and faces on fire, they beat a retreat, gasping for breath.

Witnessing the scene, the young traffic regulator Rehman Patel had the presence of mind to do the only useful thing possible. He closed all apertures and turned on the air-conditioning. The gusts of fresh air it emitted brought immediate relief to the two railway employees who slowly regained their