Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [121]
Oh my friend, I cannot tell you
Whether she was near or far,
Real or a dream …
The worker-poet spoke fervently, his eyes half-closed.
It was like a river flowing through my heart.
Like a moon lit up, I devoured her face
And felt the stars dance about my head …
Jagannathan Mukund would not go picnicking with his son beside the Narmada’s sacred waters the next day. The sound of his telephone ringing had just rudely awoken the works manager of the factory where Rehman Khan worked. S.P. Chowdhary, his production manager, informed him that a gas leak had occurred in the MIC storage zone. Mukund refused to believe it. He simply could not let go of the idea an accident could happen in a dormant factory.
“Come and get me,” he ordered Chowdhary. “I want to go and look at the site.”
While he was getting dressed, the telephone rang again. It was Swaraj Puri, the city’s police chief, to inform him that panic-stricken residents were fleeing from the Kali Grounds. Many of them showed signs of poisoning. Mukund decided to call his friend, Professor N.P. Mishra, dean of the Gandhi Medical College and chief of internal medicine at Hamidia Hospital. The doctor had just come back from a wedding.
“N.P.!” he warned. “Get ready for some emergency admissions at the hospital. It seems there’s been an accident at the plant.”
“Is it serious?” asked Mishra anxiously.
“I’m sure not, the factory’s out of production. A few inconsequential poisonings, I imagine.”
“A gas leak?”
“So they tell me. I’ll know more when I’ve visited the scene.”
The doctor pressed his friend. “Phosgene?” he asked, remembering the death of Mohammed Ashraf.
“No, methyl isocyanate.”
This answer left the professor at a loss. Carbide had never supplied Bhopal’s medical teams with any detailed information about the substance.
“What are the symptoms?”
“Oh, nausea, sometimes vomiting and difficulty in breathing. But with damp compresses and a little oxygen everything should be all right. Nothing really serious …”
Was this reputable engineer, chosen by Carbide to succeed the plant’s last American manager, acting a part? Or was he simply ignorant? Did he really not know that MIC was a deadly substance? When, a few minutes later, he reached Hamidia Road, his white Ambassador was suddenly swamped by a throng of people coughing their lungs out, vomiting, groping their way about. Fists banged on the body of his car.
“Where are you going?” shouted a man who was frothing at the mouth.
“To the factory!” answered Mukund through the closed window.
“To the factory! You’re mad! Turn back or you’re dead!”
At these words, the engineer wound down his window. A powerful smell of chemicals overwhelmed the interior. Mukund’s driver immediately started to choke. Crumpled over his steering wheel, he began to turn the car around.
“We’ve had it, sir,” he wailed.
Mukund grabbed him by the arm. “Carry straight on,” he ordered, pointing to the avenue leading up to Carbide’s site. “That’s where we’re going.”
Fortunately, Mukund had taken the precaution of bringing some handkerchiefs and a bottle of water. He handed out compresses to the production manager and the driver while the car carved its way through the middle of the fleeing crowd.
In a matter of minutes the emergency rooms of Hamidia Hospital looked like a morgue. The two doctors on duty, Deepak Gandhe and Mohammed Sheikh, had thought they were going to have a quiet night after Sister Felicity’s visit. All at once the department was invaded. People were dropping like flies. Their bodies lay strewn about the wards, corridors, offices,