Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [70]
In the end so much indifference and blindness disheartened the journalist. It appeared that the anger over Ashraf’s death and the hunger strikes had been short-lived. If the Bhopalis preferred to believe the protestations of safety issued by Carbide— lies as far as Keswani was concerned—he would leave them to their fate. He scuttled his newspaper, packed his music collection in two suitcases and bought a train ticket for Indore, where a big daily newspaper offered him a golden opportunity. Before he left Bhopal, however, he wanted to respond to a statement made on the parliamentary rostrum of the state of Madhya Pradesh. “There is no cause for concern about the presence of the Carbide factory because the phosgene it produces is not a toxic gas,” the minister of employment had declared. In two long letters Keswani summarized the findings of his investigations. He addressed the first to the state’s highest authority, Chief Minister Arjun Singh, whose links with the Carbide management were common knowledge. The second he sent to the president of the supreme court, along with a petition requesting the closure of the factory. Neither of the two letters received a reply.
27
Ali Baba’s Treasure for the Heroes of the Kali Grounds
Everyone to the teahouse! Ganga has a surprise for us!”
Rahul sped along like lightning on his wheeled plank, bearing the news from alleyway to alleyway. Orya, Chola and Jai Prakash at once emptied themselves of their occupants. Their vitality and their incredible ability to mobilize were the hallmarks of these disinherited people. With each of her weekly visits, Sister Felicity became more and more convinced that the poor she came to help were stronger than any misfortune.
The man who was promising them a big surprise was one of the most respected characters in the three bustees. With the passage of the years, Ganga Ram had become, like Belram Mukkadam and the godfather Omar Pasha, one of the Kali Grounds’ influential figures. His rejection by a Carbide tharagar a few years previously had not diminished his spirit of resistance. The same year he tried and failed to be hired at the plant, Ganga found a new trade. A few days before Diwali, the festival of lights and prosperity and the time when all Hindus repaint their houses, Ganga had turned himself into a house painter. In order to buy himself a ladder, a bucket and some brushes, he had paid a visit to another leprosy survivor, whom he had helped during his tenure at Hamidia Hospital. Welcomed as if he were the god Rama himself, Ganga had been able to borrow the money he needed. Two years later his business had six employees. Success had not gone to his head, however. Ganga Ram, together with his wife Dalima and her adopted son, had not left the neighborhood where once four lines drawn with a stick in the dust had provided them with shelter. Dalima was a great favorite in the community. Everyone adored this bright young woman with her green eyes and her tattooed hands, who got about on her crutches without complaining and always with a smile. Modest in the extreme, she never lifted the bottom of her sari to reveal the horrible scars on her legs and the fractured bones that stood out beneath her skin. Frightened by the gangrene that was spreading through her legs, the surgeon at Hamidia Hospital had wanted to amputate. The young woman’s opposition had been so passionate that she had awakened the entire hospital. “I’d rather die than lose my legs!” she told the surgeon. He gave her a metal pin and a bone graft, and though Dalima had managed to keep her legs, they were lifeless. The poor woman would be on crutches for the rest of her life, except when she allowed herself to be carried by the former leper to whose destiny she had been lucky enough to join her own.
Ganga Ram organized the surprise at the teahouse like a festival. He had exchanged his sandals and old blue painting shirt for gondola-shaped mules and a magnificent kurta of embroidered white cotton. Giving free rein to his comic talents, he had dug out