Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [24]
It was on the smell, or rather the lack thereof, that the initial results of these unprecedented efforts were judged. A properly sealed chemical plant does not give off any smell. Such was not the case with the factories polluting the Kanawha Valley with emissions that none of its two hundred and fifty thousand residents could escape. “The smells ended up permeating the trees, flowers, the river water and even the air we breathed,” complained Pamela Nixon, a thirty-eight-year-old laboratory assistant at the Saint Francis Hospital in South Charleston. Along with several hundred other black families, she lived in the Perkins Avenue area, close by the tanks and chimneys of the Institute works. A few days before the launch of the new factory, Pamela and her neighbors found a leaflet in their mailboxes sent by Union Carbide’s local management. Entitled Plan for the General Evacuation of Institute, this document listed the procedures to be observed in case of an incident. The first instruction was to stay put. “Switch your radio to WCAW station, 689 meters medium wave, or your television to channel 8 on station WCHS,” the document instructed. “This is the kind of announcement that you are likely to hear: At ten o’clock this morning, the West Virginia state police reported an industrial accident involving dangerous chemical substances. The accident occurred at 09.50 hours at the Institute site of the Union Carbide Company. All persons living in the vicinity are invited to remain in their homes, close their doors and windows, turn off all fans and air-conditioning systems, and keep a listening watch for further instructions. The next communication will be broadcast in five minutes.” Pamela Nixon taped the sheet of paper to a corner of her fridge door.
Two weeks later, when the new plant had begun production, the young woman suddenly noticed a strange smell coming in through her kitchen window. It was being carried on the breeze blowing, as usual, from the direction of the industrial structures located upwind of her home. It was neither the smell of fish nor the odor of rotten eggs that she had grown accustomed to. This new smell went to show that even if the plant she could see from her house was a model of advanced technology, it was not, in fact, totally sealed. However it triggered a childhood memory. Like her mother’s cooking every Sunday after church, the methyl isocyanate produced by Union Carbide smelled like boiled cabbage. *
10
They Deserved the Mercy of God
The figure who entered the Orya Bustee one morning took Belram Mukkadam by surprise. He had never before seen a European venture into the neighborhood. Tall, dressed in a black, ankle-length robe, with a metal cross strung across her chest, her gray hair boyishly cropped and thick round glasses taking up much of her thin face, she sported a luminous smile. Mukkadam welcomed her with his customary friendliness.
“What a pleasant surprise! Welcome, sister. What wind of good fortune brings you here?” he asked.
The visitor saluted him the Indian way. “I’ve heard your neighborhood needs someone to provide medical care for the sick, the children and the elderly. Well, here I am. I’ve come to offer you my humble services.”
Mukkadam bowed almost to the ground.
“Bless you, sister! The god has sent you. There’s so much suffering to be relieved here.”
Forty-nine-year-old Sister Felicity McIntyre was Scottish. Born into a diplomatic family that had spent long periods in France, at eighteen she had entered a missionary order. Sent first to Senegal, then to Ceylon and finally to India, she had spent the last fourteen years in Bhopal where she ran a center for abandoned children. Most of them were suffering from serious mental handicaps. The center had been established in a modern building in the south of the city. It bore the beautiful name of “Ashanitekan”—House of Hope. Above the entrance the nun had nailed a plate