Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (12 page)

Despite his worries about the potential for misuse of insecticides, Eduardo Muñoz responded to his Indian partner’s appeal
for help. He dispatched the sales teams for the batteries with the blue-and-white logo to dispose of the surplus Sevin. Soon
nearly every single grocery, hardware shop, and traveling salesman would be selling the American insecticide. This apparently
generous gesture was not entirely devoid of self-interest. The Argentinian was counting on it to provide him with an accurate
assessment of the Indian market’s capacity to absorb pesticides. The information would be crucial when the time came to determine
the size and production volume of the Indian plant that Union Carbide had promised to build.

“Work with farmers, our partners in the field.” A tidal wave of notices bearing this slogan soon broke over the Bengali and
Bihari countryside. They showed a Sikh in a red turban placing a protective hand on the shoulder of a poor old farmer with
a face furrowed with wrinkles. In his other hand, the knight in shining armor was brandishing a box of Sevin the size of a
package of supermarket crackers. He was using it to point at an ear of corn. The copy read “My name is Kuldip Chahal. I am
an area pesticide technologist. My role is to teach you how to make five rupees out of every rupee you spend on Sevin.”

Eduardo Muñoz was all the more convinced: to convert the Indian peasants to Sevin, he would need legions of Kuldip Chahals.

T
he sudden appearance of concrete mixers, cranes and scaffolding over the bleak horizon of the Kali Grounds caused a stir in
the bustees. The blue-and-white logo flying in the vicinity of the mud huts was an even more magical emblem than the trident
of the god Vishnu, creator of all things. To Eduardo Muñoz, that flag constituted a considerable victory. He had managed to
persuade the New Delhi authorities that Union Carbide should no longer have to rely on an Indian intermediary to formulate
its Sevin concentrate. It would be able to operate openly, under its own name. In New Delhi, as elsewhere in the world, international
big business invariably found its own ways and means.

As soon as the construction site opened, several tharagars laid siege to Belram Mukkadam’s teahouse. Carbide needed a workforce.
Candidates came running and soon the drink stall became a veritable job recruitment center. Among the tharagars, Ratna Nadar
recognized the man who had recruited him in Mudilapa to double the railway tracks. Ratna would have liked to have given him
a piece of his mind, let him know just how bitter and angry he was, shout out that the poor were sick of having others grow
fat from the sweat of their labor. But this was not the moment. He might have the undreamed of opportunity to work for the
American multinational.

“I pay twenty rupees a day,” the tharagar announced, exhaling the smoke from his bidi. “And I supply a helmet and cover-all,
and one piece of soap a week, too.”

It was a small fortune for men used to feeding their families on less than four rupees a day. In gratitude, they bowed to
wipe the dust from their benefactor’s sandals. Among them was the former leper, Ganga Ram. This would be the first job he
had managed to land since leaving the wing for contagious diseases at Hamidia Hospital.

The next day at six o’clock, led by Mukkadam, all the candidates presented themselves at the gateway to the building site.
The tharagar was there to check each worker’s employment document. When it came to Ganga Ram’s turn, he shook his head.

“Sorry, friend, but Carbide doesn’t take lepers,” he declared, pointing to the two stumps of finger that were awkwardly gripping
the sheet of paper.

Ganga Ram foraged in the waist of his lunghi for the certificate to show that he was cured. “Look, look, it says there, I’m
cured!” he implored, thrusting the paper under the tharagar’s nose.

The latter was inflexible. For Ganga Ram the opportunity to don one of Carbide’s coveralls would have to remain a dream.

That evening, those who had been fortunate enough to receive the blue linen uniform took it home with them. On the way, they
presented it to the god Jagannath whose image presided over a small niche at the corner of the alleyway. Sheela, Padmini’s
mother, laid her husband’s clothing at the deity’s feet, placing a chapati and some marigold petals sprinkled with sugar water
beside it.

A few days later, Belram Mukkadam’s chief informant brought a piece of news that restored the hopes of Ganga Ram and all the
others who had not been hired.

“This building site is just the thin end of the wedge,” announced Rahul, the legless cripple. “Soon, sahibs will be arriving
from America to build other factories and they’re going to pay wages higher than even Ganesh
^*
could imagine.”

Rahul was one of the most popular characters in Orya Bustee. He traveled at ground level on a wheeled plank, which he propelled
with all the dexterity of a Formula 1 driver. With his fingers covered in rings, his long, dark hair carefully caught up in
a bun, his glass bead necklaces and his shirts with gaudy, geometric patterns, Rahul introduced a note of cheeky elegance
to the place. He was always abreast of any news, the slightest whisper of gossip. He was the Kali Grounds’ newspaper, radio
and magazine. His attractive looks, his smile and his generous disposition had earned him the nickname
“Kali Parade Ka Swarga dut”
—“the Angel of Kali Parade.”

That morning he was the bearer of another piece of news that was to appall all those gathered at the teahouse.

“Padmini, Ratna and Sheela Nadar’s daughter, has disappeared,” he announced. “She hasn’t been home for four days. She wasn’t
there this morning to help Sister Felicity with her clinic. Dilip, Dalima’s son says he and his friends lost her in the station
at Benares.”

This piece of information sent everyone rushing to the Nadars’ hut. In the bustee, everyone shared their neighbor’s misfortune.

That winter Dilip, Padmini and the gang of young ragpickers that worked the trains had been extending their expeditions farther
and farther afield. They ventured beyond Nagpur, even as far as Gwalior, which prolonged their absence by two or three days.
Hopping from train to train, they roved the dense railway network of northern India with increasing audacity. One of the most
lucrative destinations was the holy city of Benares, situated some 375 miles away, to which trainloads of Hindus of all castes
went on pilgrimage. They could make it there and back in four days, which meant that if Padmini set out on a Monday, she would
return in time for Sister Felicity’s clinic, something she would not miss for the world. These long journeys were fraught
with danger. One evening when she parted from her friends to run and buy some fritters, the train left without her. It was
the last one that night. Alone in Benares’s vast station overrun with travelers, vendors and beggars, Padmini panicked. She
burst into tears. A man wearing a white cap approached and pressed a crumpled ten-rupee note into the palm of her hands.

“Don’t thank me, little one.

I’m the one who needs you.” He invited the little girl to sit down beside him and told her that his wife had just been called
away to Calcutta to look after her dying father.

“She won’t be back for a few days and I’m looking for someone to take care of my three small children while she’s away,” he
explained. “I live close by. I’ll give you fifty rupees a week.”

Without giving her time to answer, the man scooped Padmini up by the armpits and carried her to a car parked in front of the
station. Like all great pilgrimage centers, Benares played host to a fair number of dubious activities. The prostitution of
little girls did a particularly brisk trade. According to popular belief, de-flowering a virgin restored a man’s virility
and protected him against venereal disease. The city’s numerous pleasure houses relied on professional procurers to supply
them with virgins. These procurers often bought girls from very poor families, notably in Nepal, or arranged fictitious marriages
with pretend husbands. In other instances, they simply abducted their victims.

Two other white-capped men were waiting in the car for an adolescent girl to be delivered to them. The vehicle took off at
top speed and drove for a long time before it stopped outside the gate of a temple. Twenty girls crouched inside the courtyard,
guarded by more men in white caps. Padmini tried to escape from her captors but she was forced through the gate.

In this city where every activity had sacred associations, some pimps tried to trick their young victims into believing that
they would be participating in a religious rite. Padmini was captured during the festival of Makara Sankrauti, celebrated
on the winter solstice. Makara is the goddess of carnal love, pleasure and fertility.

The young captives were driven inside the temple where two pandits with shaven heads and chests encircled with the brahmin’s
triple cord were waiting for them. “That was the beginning of a nightmare that went on for two days and two nights,” Padmini
recounted. Cajoling one minute, threatening the next, banging their gongs to punctuate their speech, performing all kinds
of rituals at the feet of the numerous deities in the sanctuary, the men sought to break down the girls’ resistance and prepare
them for the work that awaited them. Fortunately Padmini did not understand the language they spoke.

Once their very peculiar training was over, the captives were taken under escort to Munshigang, Benares’s brothel quarter,
to be divided up between the various houses that had bought them. Padmini and two other little victims were pushed into one
of the houses and taken to the first floor where a woman in her fifties was waiting for them.

“I’m your new mother,” the madam declared with a cajoling smile, “and here are some presents that will turn you into proper
princesses.”

She unfolded three different colored skirts with matching blouses and showed them several boxes containing bracelets, necklaces
and cosmetics. The gifts were part of what the pimps referred to as “the breaking of the girls.”

“And now, I’ll go and get you your meal,” the madam announced.

Padmini watched as she left the room, locking the door behind her. It was now or never. Barely two yards separated the three
little girls from the window of the room in which they were confined. Padmini made a sign to her companions, rushed to the
window, unbolted it, then jumped into the void. Her fall was miraculously broken by a fruit vendor’s stall. She picked herself
up, and seconds later, was lost in the crowd. Her getaway had been so swift that no one had time to react. Following her instincts,
the little girl ran straight ahead as fast as her legs would carry her. Soon she reached the banks of the Ganges and turned
left along the
ghats
, the stairs beside the river. In her flight she had lost her two companions but she was sure that they too had been able
to escape. The great god Jagannath had protected her. All she had to do now was find the station and climb aboard the first
train for Bhopal.
^*

Two days later, as Dilip and his friends prepared to slip aboard the Bombay Express, they suddenly caught sight of their little
sister getting out of a train car. They let out such shrieks of joy that the passengers flew to the windows in curiosity.

“There you are,” said Padmini, pulling a package from her bag. “I’ve brought you some fritters.”

The boys bore her aloft in triumph, then took her home. News of her return, already broadcast by the legless cripple Rahul,
brought hundreds of local residents rushing to her hut.

A
n official letter from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture informed Eduardo Muñoz that the New Delhi government was granting
Union Carbide a license to manufacture five thousand tons of pesticide a year. This time it was not just a matter of adding
sand to several hundred tons of concentrate imported from America, but permission to actually produce Sevin, as well as its
chemical ingredients, in India itself.