Five Past Midnight in Bhopal (20 page)

It began with a rigorous check of the sealing of all circuits. The pipework was flushed repeatedly with nitrogen. To detect
any leaks in the connecting joints, safety valves, pressure gauges and sluices were smeared with a soapy coating. The smallest
bubble alerted the operators. Next, one by one, all the hundreds of bolts that held together the various pieces of equipment
had to be tightened. Once the system was determined to be functioning correctly, the engineers began heating up the two gases,
which, when brought together, would produce methyl isocyanate. These two components—phosgene and monomethylamine—had themselves
been obtained by combining other substances. As the temperature of the gases rose, the operators opened up the circuits one
by one. The few privileged people present in the control room held their breath. The fateful moment was approaching. John
Luke Couvaras checked the dials on the reactors’ temperature and pressure gauges. Then he cried, “Go!” Whereupon an operator
activated a circuit that sent the phosgene and the monomethylamine into the same steel cylinder. The combination produced
a gaseous reaction. This gas was at once cooled down again, purified and liquefied. Then came a burst of applause. Six years
after setting off an atomic explosion, India had just produced its first drops of methyl isocyanate.

“We weren’t able to see the first trickle of MIC,” Pareek later recalled, “because it went straight into the holding chamber.
But as soon as the chamber was full we put on our protective suits to take a sample of a few centiliters of the liquid. I
carried the container with as much respect as if it had been a statue of Durga to the laboratory to have the contents analyzed.
We were thrilled at the result. Our Indian MIC was as pure a vintage as Kanawha Valley’s!”

While Union Carbide’s tanks were filling up, a celebration of a very different kind was going on at the southern boundary
of the Kali Grounds. Belram Mukkadam, Rahul, Ganga Ram, Ratna Nadar and many of the other residents of Orya Bustee gathered
around the five horned beasts the cattle merchant had just delivered. With the compensation money paid out by Carbide, Mukkadam
had decided to replace his cow Parvati with a bull. He called it Nandi, after the bull the god Shiva had taken as his mount
because it kept all danger and evil at bay. That night, by the light of the full moon, he marked the animal’s forehead with
the trident of the god. It was an emblem that augured well. Mukkadam was sure it would guarantee the fertility of the new
herd and ensure divine protection on the Kali Grounds’ bustees.

B
y appointing one of its best men to the helm of the Indian pesticide plant, the American multinational was signaling the degree
of control it expected to exercise over the Bhopal installation. Modest, almost timid-looking behind his thick glasses, Warren
Woomer was one of Carbide’s most experienced and respected engineers. Moreover, he was familiar with India and Bhopal after
having carried out two assignments there. He had helped get up the unit that produced alpha naphthol, a substance used in
the composition of Sevin. And he also had been instrumental in the launching of the Sevin plant, checking to be certain that
his Indian colleagues were correctly applying everything he had taught them at Institute.

Being an American in charge of a thousand Indians of different origins, castes, religions and languages was the toughest challenge
of his career. Woomer began with a detailed inspection of the ship.

“I couldn’t find anything fundamental at fault,” he would recall. “Of course the control room would seem obsolete to us now,
but at the time it was the best that India could produce. I noticed nothing really shocking about either the design or the
functioning of the plant. In any case my bible was the MIC manual of use with its forty pages of instructions. Every one of
them was to be treated as Gospel truth, especially the directive to keep the MIC in the storage tanks at a temperature close
to zero degrees Celsius. On this point I had decided to be intractable. Yes, it was imperative that every single drop of MIC
was kept at zero degrees. What’s more, my long honeymoon with some of the most dangerous chemical substances made me add one
recommendation to the MIC manual of use. I considered it vitally important: only stock a minimum quantity of methyl isocyanate
on site.”

Although he had encountered no problems at a technical level, Woomer still realized that many things could be improved, notably
the way in which staff members performed their tasks.

“For example, no one took the precaution of wearing safety goggles,” he would remember. “One day I put my hand over one of
the operator’s eyes. ‘That’s how your children and grandchildren are likely to see your face if you don’t protect your eyes,’
I told him severely. The story did the rounds of the plant and, next day, I found everyone wearing safety goggles. I realized
then that in India you had to touch people through the heart.”

There were plenty of other problems in store for the new captain. Firstly, how was he to remember the unpronounceable names
of so many of his colleagues?

“Sathi,” he said one day to his secretary, “you’re going to teach me the correct pronunciation of the first and last names
of everyone working in the plant, including those of their wives and children. And I’d like you to point out any mistakes
I make because of my ignorance of the ways and customs of your country.”

“
Sahb
,”
^*
the young woman replied, “in India, employees don’t tell their bosses what to do.”

“I’m not asking you to tell me what to do,” replied Woomer sharply. “I’m asking you to help me be as good a boss as possible.”

Warren Woomer was to discover, often at personal cost, the extreme subtlety of relationships in Indian society, where every
individual occupies a special place in a myriad of hierarchies.

“I learned never to make a remark to anyone in the presence of his superior,” he would say. “I learned never to announce a
decision without everyone having had the chance to express a view so that it appeared to be the result of a collective choice.
But, above all, I learned who Rama was, who Ganesh, Vishnu and Shiva were; what events the festivals of Moharam or Ishtema
commemorated; who Guru Nanak was and who was the god of work my employees worshipped so ardently and whose name was so difficult
to remember.”

The god Warren Woomer could not remain ignorant of was Vishvakarma, one of the giants in the Hindu pantheon. In Indian mythology
he personifies creative power, and the sacred texts glorify him as the “architect of the universe, the all-seeing god who
disposes of all the worlds, gives the divinities their names and exists beyond mortal comprehension.” He is also the one who
fashions the weapons and tools of the gods. He is lord of the arts and carpenter of the cosmos, builder of the celestial chariots
and creator of all ornaments. That is why he is the tutelary god of artisans and patron of all the crafts that enable humankind
to subsist.

Every year after the September moon, his effigy is borne triumphantly into all workplaces—from the smallest workroom to the
largest factory. This is a privileged time of communication between bosses and workers, when celebrations unite rich and poor
in shared worship and prayer.

Overnight the reactors, pumps and distillation columns of the Bhopal plant were decorated with wreaths of jasmine and marigold
in honor of Vishvakarma. The three great tanks due to contain tens of thousands of gallons of MIC were draped in fabrics of
many colors, making them look like carnival floats. The vast Sevin formulation unit, where the festivities were to be held,
was covered in carpets and its walls were decorated with streamers and garlands of flowers. Workmen brought cases full of
hammers, nails, pliers and hundreds of other tools, which they deposited on the ground and decorated with foliage and flowers.
Others set up the colossal altar in which the statue of the god would be installed on a cushion of rose petals. Riding on
his elephant covered by a cloth encrusted with precious stones, Vishvakarma looked like a maharajah. He wore a tunic embroidered
with gold thread and studded with jewels. One could tell he was not a human being in that he had wings and four arms brandishing
an ax, a hammer, a bow and a balance. Several hundred engineers, machine operators, foremen and workmen, most accompanied
by their wives and children, and all dressed in their festival clothes, soon filled the work floor. Squatting barefoot in
this sea of humanity, Warren and Betty Woomer, the only foreigners, watched the colorful ceremony with astonishment and respect.

After intoning mantras into a microphone, a pandit with a shaven head placed the sacred objects on a
thali
, a ritual silver plate. First the purifying fire—burning oil in a clay dish—then rose petals, a few small balls of sweet
pastry, a handful of rice and finally the
sindoor
, a little pile of scarlet powder. Ringing his small bell vigorously, the pandit blessed the collection of tools laid out
by the workers. A solitary voice then rang out, promptly followed by a hundred others. “
Vishvakarma kijai!
Long live Vishvakarma!” That was the signal. The ceremony was over and the festivities could commence. The management of the
factory had arranged for a banquet of meat curry and vegetables, lassi and
puri
, little cakes of fried wheat puffed up into balloons, to be prepared in a nearby kitchen. Beer and palm wine flowed like
water. The alarm system’s loudspeakers poured out a stentorian flood of popular tunes and firecrackers went off on all sides.
Employers and employees gave themselves up to celebration.

Like most of those in charge of the beautiful plant, Warren and Betty Woomer were not aware that the occupants of the neighboring
bustees were gathered with similar fervor around the god of tools. There was, after all, an extraordinary concentration of
workers in those areas, too. The workshops belonging to the shoemaker Iqbal, the sari embroiderer Ahmed Bassi and the bicycle
repairman Salar, were just three small links in a whole chain of workplaces in which devotees of Vishvakarma labored in order
to survive. In Jai Prakash and Chola, children supported their families by cutting up sheets of brass to make tools, or dipping
fountain pen caps in chrome baths that gave off noxious fumes. Elsewhere, youngsters slowly poisoned themselves making matches
and firecrackers, handling phosphorous, zinc oxide and asbestos powder. In poorly ventilated workshops that smelled of burning
oil and overheated metal, emaciated men laminated, soldered and fitted pieces of iron-work together. A few paces away from
the spacious house belonging to the Sikh moneylender Pulpul Singh, a dozen men sitting cross-legged made bidis. Nearly all
of them suffered from tuberculosis and thus lacked the strength to pedal a rickshaw or pull a
tilagari
, a hand cart. Provided they did not stop for a single minute, they could roll up to thirteen hundred cigarettes a day. Every
evening a tharagar would come from the town to collect what they had produced. For one thousand bidis, they received twelve
rupees, the price of two kilos of rice.