Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [82]
Belram Mukkadam, Iqbal and Rahul, who represented Dilip’s family, had listened unflinchingly, as the croaky voice of the elderly midwife laid out her demands. As marriage negotiations were traditionally long-winded affairs, custom had it that the groom’s clan consulted together before giving its consent. Dalima was so keen for her son to marry Padmini, however, that the three envoys wagged their heads at the same time, indicating that they accepted all the girl’s family’s conditions.
It was then that old Joga, the white-bearded astrologer who had silently witnessed all these exchanges, cut in. “Before you conclude your haggling, I would appreciate it if you would agree on the remuneration for my services,” he declared vehemently.
“We thought of two dhotis for you and a sari for your wife,” replied Mukkadam.
“Two dhotis and a sari!” exclaimed the jyotiji, beside himself. “You’ve got to be joking!”
From the recesses of their huts, the entire alleyway followed this unexpected turn of events with avid interest.
“If you’re not satisfied, we’ll find another jyotiji,” Rahul threatened.
The astrologer burst out laughing. “I’m the one who drew up the horoscopes! No one else will agree to choose the marriage date instead of me!”
This reply was greeted with much chortling from the onlookers. Some of the women heckled him. “He’s a real son of a bitch, that jyotiji!” sneered one of them. “More than that, he’s devious,” said another.
Suddenly, Dalima’s voice erupted like thunder. Her beautiful green eyes were bloodshot. She was fuming. “You piece of shit!” she shouted. “If you spoil my boy’s marriage, I’ll skin you alive!”
The astrologer made as if to get up and go. The shoemaker Iqbal held him by the arm. “Stay,” he begged.
“Only if you pay me a hundred-rupee deposit immediately.”
The participants looked at each other helplessly. All of a sudden, however, there was the stocky figure of Ganga Ram. He was holding a bundle of notes between the stumps of his right hand.
“There you are,” he said dryly, dropping the notes into the little man’s lap. “Now tell us on what day we should celebrate our children’s marriage.”
The astrologer went through the motions of thinking. He had already done his calculations. He had eliminated all the days when the sun entered the ninth and twelfth signs of the zodiac, and chosen one when the sun was favorable for the groom while the planet Jupiter was most beneficent for the bride-tobe.
“December second, between ten o’clock and midnight, will be the most propitious time for your children’s union,” he announced.
31
The End of a Young Indian’s Dream
The document was stamped “BUSINESS: CONFIDENTIAL” and dated September 11, 1984. Addressed to the person in charge of Union Carbide’s engineering and safety department in South Charleston, it was signed J.M. Poulson, the engineer who, two years previously, had headed the safety audit of the Bhopal factory. This time Poulson and the five members of his team had just finished inspecting the storage conditions of several hundred tons of methyl isocyanate at Institute 2, deep in the Kanawha Valley, home to more than two hundred and fifty thousand Americans.
The document revealed that the Institute plant was suffering from a number of defects and malfunctions: vibrations likely to rupture sensitive piping; potentially dangerous leakage from various pumps and other apparatus; corrosion of electric cable sheathing; poor positioning of several automatic fire extinguishers in sectors of prime importance; faults in the filling systems to the MIC tanks, etc. In short, deficiencies that proved that safety at the flagship factory left a lot to be desired. The document also claimed that the actual health of personnel working in Institute was at risk. Poulson and his team had in fact discovered that workers in the MIC unit were often subjected to chloroform vapors, especially during maintenance operations. There was no monitoring system to measure the duration of their exposure, despite the fact that chloroform was a highly