Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [141]
While the baskets of snacks were passed around, the lawyer resumed his speech. “My friends,” he explained, “if you agree to my representing your interests, we must draw up a contract.”
Upon these words, an assistant passed him a file full of forms that he brandished at arm’s length. “These are powers of attorney,” he explained, “authorizing counsel to act in lieu of his client.” The residents of Orya Bustee who had never seen such documents, got up and thronged around the American’s table. Like thousands of other Bhopalis from whom American lawyers extracted signatures that day, they could not make out the words printed on those sheets. They were content just to touch the paper respectfully. Then Ganga Ram’s voice rose above the crowd. The former leper asked the question that was on every-one’s lips.
“Sahib, how much money will you be able to get for each of us?”
The lawyer’s features froze. He paused as if thinking, then blurted out, “No less than a million rupees!”
This unheard of figure struck the assembly dumb. “A million rupees!” repeated Ganga Ram, unable to hold back his tears.
The television lenses closed in on him as if he were Shashi Kapoor, star of the big screen. Cameras flashed.
“Are you surprised at the sum?” asked one reporter. “No, not really,” stammered the former leper. “Why not?” pressed the reporter.
Ganga pointed a fingerless hand at the pack of journalists jostling around him. “Because Carbide has made us the center of the world.”
Epilogue
No one will ever know exactly how many people perished in the catastrophe. Concerned with limiting the amount of compensation that would eventually have to be handed out, the authorities stopped the reckoning quite arbitrarily at 1,754 deaths. Reliable independent organizations recorded at least 8,000 dead for the night of the accident and the two following days.
In fact, a very large number of victims were not accounted for. Among them were many immigrant workers with no fixed address. Sister Felicity and several survivors from the neighborhoods on the Kali Grounds reported having seen army trucks on the morning of December 3 picking up piles of unidentified corpses and taking them away to some unknown destination. Over the next few days, numerous bodies were seen floating on the sacred Narmada River, whose sandy shores had helped to produce the first sacks of Sevin. Some of them drifted as far as the Arabian Sea, more than six hundred miles away; others fell prey to crocodiles.
In the absence of official death certificates, large numbers of corpses were incinerated or buried anonymously. Per the mufti’s order, grave digger Abdul Hamid found himself having to bury up to ten Muslims in the same grave. According to the restaurateur Shyam Babu, who supplied the wood for Hindu cremations, more than seven thousand corpses were burned on the Vishram Ghat Trust’s five funeral pyres. The Cloth Merchant Association, for its part, stated that it had supplied enough material to make at least ten thousand shrouds for the Hindu victims alone.
The authorities contested the accuracy of these figures on the grounds that they exceeded the number of claims filed for compensation. This official reaction did not, however, take into account the fact that in many instances the catastrophe had wiped out whole families and there was no one left to apply for damages. Over four hundred dead, whose photographs remained posted on the walls of Hamidia Hospital and elsewhere for several weeks, were never reclaimed by their families. Number 435 was a young woman with tattoos on her cheeks; 213 was an emaciated