Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [35]
Once their very peculiar training was over, the captives were taken under escort to Munshigang, Benares’s brothel quarter, to be divided up between the various houses that had bought them. Padmini and two other little victims were pushed into one of the houses and taken to the first floor where a woman in her fifties was waiting for them.
“I’m your new mother,” the madam declared with a cajoling smile, “and here are some presents that will turn you into proper princesses.”
She unfolded three different colored skirts with matching blouses and showed them several boxes containing bracelets, necklaces and cosmetics. The gifts were part of what the pimps referred to as “the breaking of the girls.”
“And now, I’ll go and get you your meal,” the madam announced.
Padmini watched as she left the room, locking the door behind her. It was now or never. Barely two yards separated the three little girls from the window of the room in which they were confined. Padmini made a sign to her companions, rushed to the window, unbolted it, then jumped into the void. Her fall was miraculously broken by a fruit vendor’s stall. She picked herself up, and seconds later, was lost in the crowd. Her getaway had been so swift that no one had time to react. Following her instincts, the little girl ran straight ahead as fast as her legs would carry her. Soon she reached the banks of the Ganges and turned left along the ghats, the stairs beside the river. In her flight she had lost her two companions but she was sure that they too had been able to escape. The great god Jagannath had protected her. All she had to do now was find the station and climb aboard the first train for Bhopal. *
Two days later, as Dilip and his friends prepared to slip aboard the Bombay Express, they suddenly caught sight of their little sister getting out of a train car. They let out such shrieks of joy that the passengers flew to the windows in curiosity.
“There you are,” said Padmini, pulling a package from her bag. “I’ve brought you some fritters.”
The boys bore her aloft in triumph, then took her home. News of her return, already broadcast by the legless cripple Rahul, brought hundreds of local residents rushing to her hut.
15
A Plant as “Inoffensive as a Chocolate Factory”
An official letter from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture informed Eduardo Muñoz that the New Delhi government was granting Union Carbide a license to manufacture five thousand tons of pesticide a year. This time it was not just a matter of adding sand to several hundred tons of concentrate imported from America, but permission to actually produce Sevin, as well as its chemical ingredients, in India itself.
As usual, the Argentinian, along with his wife Rita and his colleagues, celebrated this latest success in the bar of the Hotel Grand in Calcutta. But as he raised his champagne glass to the success of the future Indian factory, he felt a nagging doubt. “Five thousand tons, five thousand tons!” he repeated, shaking his head. “I’m afraid our Indian friends may have been thinking a bit too big! A factory with the capacity for two thousand tons would be quite large enough for us to supply the whole of India with Sevin.”
The first sales figures for the Sevin formulated in the small unit on the Kali Grounds were not very encouraging. This was the reason for Eduardo Muñoz’s reluctance. Despite an extensive information and advertising campaign, the Indian farmers were not readily giving up familiar products