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Just as the apostle of the Kali Grounds had so magnificently predicted, the banner strung between two bamboo poles at the mouth of the road leading to Orya Bustee caused the tide of policemen and the bulldozers to stop dead in their tracks. The piece of material that bore the first name of Indira Gandhi’s son in imposing red letters was more powerful than any threat. The residents could go back to their huts without fear. Destiny would crush them in a different way.

18

Wages of Fear on the Roads of Maharashtra

The deadly cargo had arrived. As soon as he received the telex, the Hindu engineer Kamal Pareek alerted his assistant, the Muslim supervisor Shekil Qureshi, a chubby, thickset fellow of thirty-six. They packed the protective suits, gloves, boots, masks and helmets provided for special operations into two suitcases, and caught a flight to Bombay. Their mission was to escort two trucks loaded with sixteen drums, each containing forty-four gallons of MIC, over a distance of 530 miles. The Bhopal factory was not yet ready to make the methyl isocyanate required to produce Sevin. So, its management had decided to have several hundred barrels brought over from the Institute plant in the United States.

“Ships transporting toxic substances had to report to Aji Bunder,” Kamal Pareek recounted. “It was a completely isolated dock at the far end of the port of Bombay. People called it ‘the pier of fear.’ ”

Pareek watched with a certain amount of apprehension as the palette of drums dangled in midair on the end of a rope. The crane was preparing to deposit its load in the bottom of a barge moored alongside the ship, which would then transport the drums to the pier. Suddenly the engineer froze. Bubbles of gas were escaping from the lid of one of the containers.

The ship’s commander who had spotted the leak, shouted to the crane operator, “Quickly! Dump those drums into the water.”

“No! Whatever you do, don’t do that!” shouted Pareek, gesticulating frantically for them to stop the maneuver. “One drum of MIC in the water, and the whole lot will go up!” Turning to the skipper of the barge, he ordered, “Scram from here! Otherwise you and your family might blow up to pieces!”

The skipper, a fragile, bare-chested man, surrounded by half a dozen kids, shook his head. “Sahib, my grandparents and my parents lived and died on this barge,” he replied. “I’m ready to do the same.”

Pareek and Qureshi swiftly pulled on their protective suits, masks and helmets. Then, armed with several fat syringes full of a special glue, they jumped onto the bridge of the ship where, with infinite caution, the crane had deposited the palette. Clusters of yellow bubbles were still oozing from the damaged cover of one of the containers. The two men carefully injected the glue into the crack. “When we managed to stem the leak, I heaved the biggest sigh of relief of my life,” Pareek later admitted.

One hour later, the sixteen drums marked with the skull and crossbones sign were loaded aboard the two trucks. An agonizing journey was about to begin. Caught up in the chaos of tongas, * rickshaws, buffalo carts, sacred elephants, other animals of all kinds and overloaded trucks, the two big rigs and Pareek and Qureshi’s white Ambassador car set out on the road to Bhopal. “Every rut, every time a horn sounded, every acrobatic overtaking of a vehicle, every railway crossing, made us jump,” Shekil Qureshi remembered.

“Have you had any dealings with MIC before?” Pareek suddenly asked his companion who was fervently muttering prayers.

“Yes, once. A sparkling liquid in a bottle. It looked just like mineral water.” At this idea the two men broke into a slightly strained laughter. “In any case,” Qureshi went on, “it was so clear, so transparent, you’d never have thought you had only to inhale a few drops for it to kill you.”

Pareek directed the driver to pass the two trucks and stop a little farther on. The sun was so hot that he was worried. “Our cans mustn’t start