Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [72]
“My friends! Can any one of you tell me what’s under this cloth?” he asked.
“A chest to keep clothes in,” cried Sheela Nadar, Padmini’s mother.
Poor Sheela! Like most of the other bustee families, hers had no furniture. A rusty tin trunk, often overrun with cockroaches, was the only place she had in which to keep her wedding sari and her family’s few clothes.
A little girl went up and pressed her ear to the “surprise.” “I bet you’ve got a bear shut in a cage under your cloth.”
Ganga burst out laughing. The child’s guess was less preposterous than one might imagine. In Orya Bustee as in all the other neighborhoods, rich and poor alike, animal exhibitors and other showmen were not unusual. Trainers of monkeys, goats, mongooses, rats, parrots and scorpions, viper and cobra charmers … at any moment, a handbell, a gong, a whistle or a voice might announce the passing of some spectacle. More popular were the bear trainers, especially as far as the youngsters were concerned. Giving the children of Orya Bustee a bear would certainly have been a marvelous idea. But Ganga Ram had had an even better one. With all the care of a conjuror about to produce a rabbit, he placed his top hat on the mysterious object. Then, clapping his hands, he gave the band its signal. The drums and cymbals mingled with the trumpets in a deafening cacophony. As if for some ritual, Ganga then invited Dalima to walk three times around the table on which his “surprise” was sitting. Proud and erect under her veil of blue silk bordered with golden fringe, the young woman proceeded cautiously. Her steps were still unsteady but no one could take their eyes off her. They were hypnotized, for, at that instant, she was the embodiment of the determination of the poor to triumph over adversity.
As soon as Dalima had completed her three passes, Ganga continued. “And now, my friends, Dalima herself is going to unveil my second surprise,” he announced.
When the young woman tugged at the cloth, an “Oh!” of amazement burst from the throats of all those present. Nearly ten years after their country had sent a satellite into space and six years after they had set off an atomic bomb, tens of millions of Indians did not even know such a device existed. Enthroned on the teahouse table sat the bustees’ first television set.
Those in charge of the beautiful plant sat down around the teak conference table to examine the crushing report sent in September 1984 by the three investigators from South Charleston. Kamal Pareek, assistant manager of safety, was particularly concerned. “The anomalies the report revealed might well have been part of the usual teething problems of a large plant,” he would say later, “but they were still serious.” The American works manager shared his opinion. Warren Woomer belonged to a breed of engineers for whom one single defective valve was a blight upon the ideal of discipline and morality that ruled his professional life. “Not tightening a bolt properly is as serious an offense as letting a phosgene reactor get out of control,” he would tell his operators. In his quiet, slightly languid voice, he enumerated the report’s observations. Before seeking out the guilty and sanctioning them, all the anomalies had to be rectified. That could take weeks, possibly even months. A schedule for the necessary repairs and modifications to the plant would have to be sent to the technical center in South Charleston and approved by its engineers.
It would fall to a new captain to bring the Bhopal factory back up to scratch, however. In its desire to proceed with the complete Indianization of all foreign companies in their country, the New Delhi government had declined to renew Woomer’s residence permit. His replacement, a forty-five-year-old Brahmin with the swarthy skin of a southerner and an impressive academic and professional record, was already sitting opposite him. The chairman of Carbide and his board of directors had unanimously approved the appointment of this exceptionally gifted individual. Yet,