Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [148]
JOHN LUKE COUVARAS—The engineer whose wife was massaged by eunuchs, has nostalgic memories of those splendid days when he helped to build the beautiful plant. He is now living in Greece but dreams of building a house on the sacred banks of the Narmada River, near Bhopal.
SUMAN DEY—The operator on duty in the MIC control room on the night of December 2, 1984, set up a motorbikes workshop with the severance pay he received from Carbide. His unit is on the verge of closing down owing to business losses.
SHARDA DIWEDI—The managing director of the power station that supplied the lighting for the weddings on the fateful night retired and lives in Bhopal. He suffers from chronic shortness of breath, which he attributes to his efforts to save the guests at the wedding of his niece Rinu, whose marriage could only be celebrated several days after the catastrophe. Ten years later, her husband died of a cancer that the Diwedis see as a consequence of poisoning by the toxic cloud. As for Rinu, she suffers from recurrent bouts of depression. The catastrophe destroyed her life.
RANJIT DUTTA—The Indian engineer who, along with Eduardo Muñoz, built the first Sevin formulation factory and who tried, four months before the accident, to alert his superiors to the dilapidated state of the plant, retired to Bhopal. He works as a pesticide consultant for several chemical manufacturers.
DR. DEEPAK GANDHE—The doctor on duty at Hamidia Hospital on the night of the disaster left Bhopal to open a practice in the small town of Khandwa, on the route to Bombay. He devotes part of his time to humanitarian work in the poor areas of Bihar.
RAJKUMAR KESWANI—The Cassandra who predicted the catastrophe in his newspaper now works as a reporter for a New Delhi television network. He did not profit from the far-sighted articles that for a while made him India’s most famous journalist.
REHMAN KHAN—The poetry-loving factory worker, who became an instrument of destiny, still lives in Bhopal. He works for Madhya Pradesh’s forestry department.
COLONEL GURCHARAN SINGH KANUJA—The Sikh officer whose family was murdered while returning from a pilgrimage to Amritsar, and who, on the night of the disaster, saved hundreds of inhabitants of the poor neighborhoods near the Carbide factory from the gas, is now living in Jaipur. Ever since the fateful night, he has had breathing difficulties and is gradually losing his sight. In 1996, he tried to obtain financial assistance from Carbide to go to the United States for an eye operation that Indian specialists are unable to perform. Despondent at the prospect of becoming completely blind, this hero of that tragic night is still waiting for a response.
PROFESSOR N.P. MISHRA—The dean of the medical college who roused all the faculty students from their beds, telephoned all Madhya Pradesh’s pharmacists and arranged for emergency aid, is still Bhopal’s leading medical authority. He sees patients in his superb villa in Shamla Hills, plastered with diplomas and distinctions awarded by medical institutions all over the world. A notice displays the price of a consultation: one hundred and fifty rupees, approximately three dollars.
JAGANNATHAN MUKUND—Following the closure of the Kali Grounds plant, the factory’s last works manager left Bhopal to live in Bombay where, for several years, he went on working for Union Carbide. He retired to Karnataka, a southern state. He is still under indictment by an Indian court to stand trial for his role in the tragedy.
EDUARDO MUÑOZ—After running Union Carbide’s agricultural products division for several years, the flamboyant Argentinian engineer who fathered the Bhopal factory, moved to San Francisco where he now sells wine refrigeration cabinets.
PADMINI NADAR AND HER HUSBAND DILIP—see the Epilogue.
KAMAL PAREEK—The Indian engineer who left his