Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [73]
Once more the people of the bustees demonstrated their resourcefulness. In less than an hour Ganga Ram’s television set was broadcasting its first pictures. In the absence of any electricity in the neighborhood, Ganga Ram’s friends had run a cable to the line that supplied the factory. Salar the bicycle repairman had rigged up an antenna with a wheel mounted on a bicycle fork. The pirate apparatus had a very superior look to it, like a satellite listening station.
Suddenly a picture lit up the screen. Hundreds of eyes nearly jumped from their heads as they watched a Hindi newscaster announce the program for Doordarshan, the national television network. At a single stroke that picture banished all the grayness, mud, stench, flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats, hunger, unemployment, sickness and death. And the fear, too, that the great factory with its strings of lightbulbs illuminating the night, would from then on inspire.
Every evening the program on Indian television’s only channel began with the latest episode in a serial. The epic of the Ramayana is to India what the Arthurian romances are to the West. Thanks to Ganga Ram, the occupants of the Kali Grounds could watch the thousand dramas and enchantments of their popular legend unfold before them. For an hour every evening, they would live out the marvelous love story of Prince Rama and his divine Sita. They would laugh, cry, suffer and rejoice along with them. Many of them knew whole passages of the show by heart.
Padmini could remember how, when she was little, her mother used to sing to her the mythical adventures of the monkey general. Later, whenever storytellers passed through her village, all the inhabitants would gather in the square to listen to the fantastic stories that had, since the dawn of time, imbued everyday life with a sense of the sacred. No baby went to sleep without hearing its elder sister intone some episode from the great epic poem. Children’s games were inspired by its clashes between good and evil, schoolbooks exalted the exploits of its heroes, marriage ceremonies cited Sita’s fidelity as an example to the newlyweds. Bless you, Ganga Ram, for thanks to you it was possible to dream once more. Seated before your magic lamp, the men and women of the Kali Grounds’ bustees would be able to draw new strength to surmount the tribulations of their karma.
28
The Sudden Arrival of a Cost-Cutting Gentleman
Fourteen years, six months and seventeen days after an Indian mason had laid the first brick of the Bhopal Carbide factory on its concrete foundations, its last American captain left. “That December 6, 1982, will always be one of the most nostalgic days of my life,” Warren Woomer later said. The week prior to their departure the Woomers were caught up in a whirlwind of receptions. Everyone wanted to bid farewell to the “quiet American” who had known how to marry the different cultures in his Indian work-force with the requirements of a highly technological industrial plant. It was true that the death of Mohammed Ashraf, the trade union unrest earlier that year and the worrying conclusions of the summer audit had revealed some cracks in the ship. But Sahb, as the Indian workers affectionately called him, left with his head held high. All the problems would be resolved, the bad workmanship would be rectified, the gaps filled. He was convinced that no serious accident would ever tarnish the reputation of the beautiful plant in the heart of the subcontinent. It would continue to produce, in total safety, the precious white powder that was indispensable to India’s peasants. Woomer accepted the gifts engraved with his name in gratitude.
The American did know, however, that there were only two circumstances under which the factory could have a trouble-free future. The first was the favorable disposition of the Indian sky. Without generous monsoons to produce abundant harvests, the peasants would be unable to buy Sevin, in which case