Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [128]
In all this turmoil of suffering, fear and death, Sister Felicity did her best to save abandoned children in the corridors and wards of the hospital. There were dozens of them wandering about, almost blind, or lying groaning in their own vomit on the bare floor. The first thing the nun did was regroup them at the far end of the ground floor of the hospital where she had set up her help center. Word traveled quickly, and other children were brought to her. Most of them had got lost during the night when their panic-stricken parents entrusted them to passengers in some truck or car.
With the help of two medical students, the nun carefully cleaned their eyes. Sometimes the effect was instantaneous. Her own eyes filled with tears when one of her protégés cried, “I can see!” Then she would guide those who had been miraculously cured to the aid center and give her attention to other young victims, whom she bombarded with questions.
“Do you know this little girl?”
“Yes, she’s my sister,” answered one child. “And this boy?”
“He goes to my school,” answered another. “What’s his name?”
“Arvind,” a third told her.
Thus, little by little, the links between these suffering people were reestablished, and sometimes a distressed father or mother was reunited with a much loved child.
A tall young man dressed in a festive sherwani, his feet shod in spangled mules, paced ceaselessly through the corridors and wards of that same hospital. He was looking for someone. Sometimes he would stop and gently turn a body over to look at a face. Dilip was sure that he would find Padmini somewhere in this charnel house. He did not know that his young wife had just been carried away to the morgue on a stretcher.
The potbellied little man, who had promised the police chief that he was prepared “to feed the whole city” if necessary, never imagined that he would have to keep his promise so soon. Shyam Babu, the proprietor of the Agarwal Poori Bhandar, the most famous restaurant in Bhopal, had just gone to bed, when two men rang his doorbell. He recognized the president and the secretary of the Vishram Ghat Trust, a Hindu charitable organization of which he was a founding member.
“There’s been an accident at Carbide,” announced the president before being overtaken by a coughing fit that sent him reeling.
His companion continued. “Thousands of people have been killed,” he said. “But, more important, there are thousands of injured who have nothing to drink or eat at Hamidia Hospital and under Parvez shamianas. You, and you alone, can come to their aid.”
Shyam Babu stroked his mustache. His blue eyes lit up. May the goddess Lakshmi be blessed. At last he was going to fulfill his lifelong dream of feeding the whole city.
“How many are there of them?” he asked.
The president tried to overcome his bout of coughing. “Twenty thousand, thirty thousand, fifty thousand, maybe more …”
Shyam stood at attention. “You can count on me, no matter how many there are.”
As soon as his visitors had gone, he mobilized all his employees and enlisted the support of the staff of several other restaurants. Even before daybreak, some fifty cooks, assistants and bakers were at work making rations of potatoes, rice, dhal, curry and chapatis, which they wrapped in newspaper. Stacked into Babu’s Land Rover, these makeshift meals were taken at once and distributed to the survivors. This was not to be the only good deed done by the restaurateur. Having taken care of the living, Shyam Babu would have to see to the dead.
Under the great tamarind tree in Kamla Park on the narrow strip of garden separating the Upper Lake from the Lower, a sadhu looked on impassively as people fled the deadly cloud. All through that night of panic, the Naga Baba, or naked holy man, as the Bhopalis called him, remained