Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [117]
“There’s been an explosion at Carbide,” announced the panic-stricken speaker. “The whole area is covered with a toxic cloud. People are scrambling about in all directions. Get ready. You’ll be hit next. The wind is blowing the cloud in your direction …”
“It’s already here,” replied Sherma.
A vision of horror passed through the deputy stationmaster’s mind at that moment: the Gorakhpur Express was speeding toward Bhopal with hundreds of passengers onboard.
“Whatever happens we’ve got to make sure the train doesn’t stop here!” he cried to his two assistants.
No sooner had he spoken, however, than he shook his head. He knew what Indian railway bureaucracy was like. An order like that could not be given at his level. Only the chief stationmaster could issue such a directive. Sherma immediately dialed Harish Dhurve’s home. No one answered.
“He must be downing a last whisky at the Railway Colony wedding,” he said, frustrated.
There was little point in trying again. He could never receive the necessary authorization to prevent a holocaust in his station. His boss had been dead for half an hour.
There were no vendors, lepers, beggars, coolies, children or travelers left. Platform No. 1 was nothing more than a charnel house of entangled bodies, stinking unbearably of vomit, urine and defecation. Weighed down by the gas, the toxic blanket had draped itself like a shroud over the people chained to their baggage. Here and there, an odd survivor tried to get up. But the deadly vapors very quickly entered his lungs and he fell back with mouth contorted like a fish out of water. The beggars and leprosy sufferers, whose tubercular lungs were already weak, had been the first to die.
Thanks to the air-conditioning filtering the air, the three men in the stationmaster’s office and a few coolies who had taken refuge in their cloakroom had so far managed to escape the noxious fumes. In vain V.K. Sherma frantically cranked his telephones to call for help. All the lines were busy. At last he managed to speak to Dr. Sarkar. After evacuating the priest and his family, the railway workers’ doctor had gone back to his office in the Railway Colony. From behind the damp compresses over his mouth and nose, he sounded confused. He had just spoken to Dr. Nagu, director of the Madhya Pradesh Health Service.
“The minister was furious,” said Sarkar. “He told me the people at Carbide didn’t want to reveal the composition of the toxic cloud. He tried to insist and asked whether they were dealing with chlorine, phosgene, aniline or I don’t know what else. It was no use. He wasn’t able to find out anything. He was told the gases were not toxic and that all anyone had to do to protect himself was put a damp handkerchief over their nose and mouth. I’ve tried it and it seems to work. Oh! I was forgetting … Carbide people also told the director to ‘breathe as little as possible’! My poor Sherma, pass that advice on to your travelers while they’re waiting for help to arrive.”
Help! In his station strewn with the dead and the dying, the deputy stationmaster felt like the commander of a ship about to be engulfed by the ocean. Even if he could do nothing for the passengers on platform No. 1, however, he must still try to save those due to arrive. Unable to contact his superior to prevent the Gorakhpur Express from stopping at Bhopal station, he would still do all he could to impede it from running into the trap. The only way was to halt it at the previous stop. His assistant immediately called the station at Vidisha, a small town less than twelve miles away.
“The train has just left,” the stationmaster informed him. “Curses on the god,” groaned Sherma. “Is there at least a signal we could switch to red?” asked Patel, the young traffic regulator.
The three men looked at the luminous indicators on the large board on the wall.
“There isn’t a single point or signal box