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By Root 1056 0

production would have to be slowed down and possibly even stopped. The financial consequences of such events would be grave. The other condition was compliance with the safety regulations. Woomer discussed this at length with his successor. Throughout his long career dealing with some of the most toxic chemical substances, he had expounded a philosophy based on one essential principle: only keep a strict minimum of dangerous materials on site. By maintaining this credo, the engineer was indirectly criticizing those who, against the advice of Eduardo Muñoz, had decided to install three enormous tanks capable of containing more than 120 tons of methyl isocyanate. “I left with the hope that those tanks would never be filled,” he would say later, “and that the small quantity of gas stored to meet the immediate needs of Sevin production would always be rigorously refrigerated as prescribed by the manual compiled by the MIC specialists.”

Like all lovers of culture, art and beauty, Warren Woomer and his wife Betty had succumbed to the magic of India. They promised themselves that they would return. The American was not aware of Rajkumar Keswani’s articles. None of the Indians who worked for him had mentioned them. Looking back for one last time at his beautiful plant through the rear window of the car taking him to the airport, Woomer wished it good luck.

The first sign that drought had once again struck the countryside of Madhya Pradesh and its bordering states was the sudden appearance of destitute families on the outskirts of the Bhopal bustees. A massive influx of untouchables, the outcasts whom Gandhi had baptized “harijans, children of god” was the first hint that not a single grain of rice or ear of corn could be gleaned from the fields that year.

Belram Mukkadam, the members of the Committee for Mutual Aid and all the other residents set about making the newcomers welcome. One person would bring a cover, someone else an item of clothing, a candle, some rice, oil, sugar, a bottle of paraffin, a few matches. Ganga Ram, Dalima and her son Dilip, Padmini and her parents, the old midwife Prema Bai, the godfather Omar Pasha with his two wives and his sons, the sorcerer Nilamber, the shoemaker Iqbal, the tailor Bassi and the legless cripple Rahul were, as always, the first to show their solidarity. Even the sons of the moneylender Pulpul Singh brought food for the refugees. Seeing all these people sharing what they had, Sister Felicity, who had rushed to the Orya Bustee with her first-aid kit, thought “A country capable of so much generosity is an example to the world.” But she was struck by the appearance of the arriving children: although their stomachs were empty, their abdomens were swollen like balloons due to acute vitamin deficiencies and the presence of worms.

A few days after the arrival of the landless untouchables, the farmers themselves came to seek refuge in Bhopal. The Kumar family, originally from a small village on the Indore road, had eight children. All of them had swollen stomachs, except Sunil, who at twelve was the eldest. Tales of this kind of famine were part of everyday life in India. Rice was invariably the protagonist. The rice they had planted, then lovingly replanted; the rice they had caressed and palpated; the emerald green rice that had soon turned the color of verdigris, then yellow for want of water; the rice that had drooped, shriveled up, dried out and finally died. Nearly all the residents of the Kali Grounds were former peasants. Almost all of them had suffered through the same tragedy as the refugees who had sought asylum among them.

For the giant factory that stood several hundred yards away, this exodus was a bad omen. Warren Woomer’s hopes were not to be fulfilled. Ten years earlier, Eduardo Muñoz had tried to make Carbide’s directors appreciate a fundamental aspect of Indian existence: the vagaries of the monsoon. The people to whom the Argentianian had spoken had swept aside his warnings and responded with a figure. To a pesticide manufacturer, India meant half a billion potential