Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [132]
“Undress him! Then you’ll see whether or not he’s circumcised.”
The two women tore off his lunghi and underpants and examined his penis. The man was circumcised. Furious, the Hindu woman got up and set off in search of another corpse.
The number of expressions of solidarity multiplied. Never before had the India of a thousand castes and twenty million divinities shown itself so united in adversity. Tens of organizations, institutions, associations, hundreds of entrepreneurs and businessmen, thousands of private individuals of all social classes, the Rotarians, the Lions, the Kiwanis and the scouts, all came rushing to the rescue of the survivors. Many towns in Madhya Pradesh sent truckloads of medicines, blankets and clothing. Volunteers of different religious faiths spread out cloths on the corners of avenues, in squares, all over the place, onto which people threw mountains of rupees.
That day after the catastrophe was also a time for anger. A policeman came to warn Mukund, who had remained closeted in his office, that thousands of rioters were heading for the factory, yelling, “Death to Carbide!” After trying all night to get hold of his superiors in Bombay, the works manager finally got through by telephone to one of them.
“There’s been an accident,” he informed his boss K.S. Kamdar. “An MIC leak. I don’t know yet how or why.”
“Any fatalities?” Kamdar asked anxiously. “Yes.”
“Many?”
“Alas! Yes.”
“Two figures?”
“More.”
“Three?”
“More like four, Kamdar.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Kamdar was stunned. At last he inquired, “Do you have the situation in hand?”
“Until the crowd invades the factory. Or the police come and arrest me.”
Just then, they were interrupted by several uniformed policemen and two plainclothes inspectors from the Criminal Bureau of Investigation. They carried a warrant to detain Mukund and his assistants.
Outside the situation was growing worse. Police chief Swaraj Puri, who had seen so many of his men disappear the previous night, feared violent action. With no means to oppose it, he decided to resort to a stratagem. He summoned the driver of the only vehicle left to him with a loudspeaker.
“Drive all over town,” he ordered the officer, “and announce that there’s been another gas leak at Carbide.”
The effect of the ruse was miraculous. The rioters who had been about to overrun the factory scattered instantly. In a matter of minutes the city was empty. Only the dead remained.
The fatal cloud had spared the vast enclosure at the end of Hamidia Road where, in the shade of century-old mango and tamarind trees, generations of Muslims had been laid to rest. The man in charge of the place was a frail little individual with dark skin and a chin studded with a small salt-and-pepper goatee. Abdul Hamid had been born in that cemetery. He had grown up there and become its master. It was a position that enabled him to live in comfort; for every burial he received a hundred rupees and he oversaw two or three each day. Abdul Hamid was a central and familiar figure in the Muslim community. They all, at one time or another, had to deal with him. Although he was no stranger to death, the poor man could never have anticipated the spectacle that awaited him that morning at the entrance to his cemetery. Dozens of bodies wrapped in shrouds were piled up like parcels outside the fence. “It was the first time I’d ever seen so many corpses at once,” he said later.
Hamid called his sons and set to work digging graves. Volunteers