Bhopal: How Much Have The Lakes Forgotten?

By: Shariq Khan.

I had already come a long way from the night I broke my father's IIT dreams and carried on with my own journey. A journey for which the path and the rules I had laid myself. A journey which I was not forced upon and one on which I was not my father's son. I was Me. On a journey to discover myself, the next six months as they unfolded had some bitter surprises in store for me. I had some lessons that I would learn 'the hard-way'.

On the very first mile of the journey, every preconception I had had of 'a journalistic society' shattered. The first class I attended at the Manipal School of Communication had my eyes opening wide to a reality. This place, like all other places, was not for me. There really is no place for us in life. We have to adjust and adapt. That was the first learning.

I found myself in a foreign land being treated like an alien. There was a crowd around me. These were the same people I had thought I would be able to escape by not going to the engineering institutes. I was wrong. These were people willing to kill their teachers over marks. These were teachers willing to kill those students that couldn't score marks.

As it happened I found my quantum of solace in New Media classes. It was the only class that felt like my version of Journalism. I have to admit here that when I had looked up the subject list for 'Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Communication', I assumed this subject would deal with how to make effective use of 'New Media' to become better journalists. On the very contrary Mr. Raviraj (the New Media lecturer) was more concerned with how New Media was destroying Journalism. It was the second lesson I learnt in Manipal: Make no assumptions.

The only class that I felt like involving myself in was his. Consequently, I became a part of every discussion. He brought a motion into the class that the class generally opposed. He supported immigration. He campaigned against Coca-Cola. He talked about the other side of 'Clean India Campaign'. The dirty side. In most of his discussions I was the only man on 'his' team.

I remember in a debate on immigration, a Bengali got hyper-agitated when I spoke in support of the Bangladeshi immigrants. His eyes were blood shot and he rapped the bench so ferociously that the girls sitting around him left the bench. He screamed about how immigrants were taking away 'our' jobs. That was the third lesson I learnt. What I feel right is not right to everyone.
The fourth was I would be hated for being morally-right. The world doesn't function on morals was a lesson that Manipal has been forcing me to learn from day one. I am defiant. I am determined. I will work to bend the world to work on morals.
Mr. Raviraj's classes made me that which I could never be in Bhopal. Myself. He sent the class around Manipal to look for stories relating with the change in people's lives that was brought by Technology. I related with it at a personal level. It was what I had wanted Journalism to be. An opportunity for me to be able to relate with people at the human level. I no longer wanted to stay inside those boundaries that my father had created for me. I acknowledge he created those boundaries out of his love. He has always been protective of his family. But I could not live in those boundaries any more. I felt suffocated. I wanted to go and connect to people's problems. To forget my own perhaps but for whatever reason I wanted to connect.
Mr. Raviraj's project gave birth to the series 'An Unwanted Development's Report'.

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Six months have passed. I must now return to those boundaries. And before I can return to Manipal, I'll be in Bhopal's smothering caress. I can not say if I missed the 'city of lakes' much.

One of the many things I regret South India for was the 30 hour train journey from Bhopal to Manipal. It was exhausting.

I had always had troubles sleeping. However, I soon drifted asleep in the train.

Sleep didn't stay for long. I woke up with a scream trapped in my throat.

Two dark life-less eyes stare at me. A boy, only around an year old hardly lies with his body buried and his face unearthed. The lifeless eyes extract the sould out of the living spectators. Camera-men are clicking photos. The crowd disappears. I am still standing. Standing still. I fall to my knees in front of the boy. I do not know why but I feel a connection with him. Why? Before I can answer myself a hand shots straight out of the dirt.

I wake up and for some elongated brief moments I can not focus on anything around me. Then I remember. It is the same image that would become an icon of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. For those who have not heard of it, it was the worst Industrial accident that has ever occurred in the world. On the fateful night of December the 2nd, 1984, thirty metric tons of Methyl Isocyanate were leaked into the atmosphere from a container at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (MP). The MP Government puts the number of the dead at 3,787. Ingrid Eckerman estimated 8,000 died within two weeks and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases.

On the 25th anniversary I came across an article which reported how the dead bodies were buried in the days following the tragedy. At the nearest Muslim grave-site, holes were dug and 3 to 4 bodies were buried in the same hole. The number of people being brought in were too many for the amount of space available. The grave digger told he buried people irrespective of religion. Later, graves were counted for Government estimates.

The image shows the dead bodies that were brought to be buried after the night of the Bhopal Gas tragedy.

An invisible agent of death had clouded over a sleeping city. The concentration of the gas cloud was such that children and other people of lesser height were worst affected. Witnesses tell that living men dropped dead in a matter of minutes. Those that made it into the government hospitals did it with complaints of irritation in their eyes. Consequently, doctors failed to identify the real problem. The gas was damaging the victim's internal organs. More people died. The ordeal continued into the morning of the 3rd, now officially corroborated as the day of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

This happens to be the 30th anniversary of that horrific event. I reached Bhopal a few days early. The first thing I did was that I scanned through the newspapers to look for rallies or protests - customary rituals that a few organisations hold seeking justice- around the town. But it is useless. Media and the rest of the 'Journalistic society' will feign interest on the 3rd of December and forget all about it the next day. Justice has not yet been delivered and as things are progressing in this world, one that does not function on morals, justice will never be done to those that died and those that have lived a death for the past thirty years.

Sadly the protests seem to be fewer. Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide, died earlier this year in September. Who should they hold culprit now?

What has happened to Bhopal since after the Gas Tragedy is even more tragic. In Thirty years, at least two new generations have taken birth. With the change of a generation is attached a bitter reality. Every new generation progresses by forgetting its ancestors' sorrows. A son becomes disconnected with his father's struggles. This is because he doesn't experience them.

In Bhopal, this new generation is of the 'unaffected'. This is a generation which has not experienced the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. This generation includes a myriad of people now calling Bhopal their home. Migrants, temporary residents and children of residents of areas that were not covered by the gas cloud on that night form this generation.

Alongside them, also living in Bhopal are the generations of people who were indeed affected by the gas cloud. The number of these people is reducing with every passing year. However, their children are still born with unimaginable deformities. Many children are stillborn. Wikipedia states that after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy,

"The stillbirth rate increased by up to 300% and neonatal mortality rate by around 200%."  -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

An image from The Health Site showing how the Bhopal Gas Tragedy still affects people of Bhopal.

An estimate puts the number chronic illnesses in Bhopal at 120,000.

What is tragic about the uprise of the new generations in Bhopal is that they ask questions like 'Why should Warren Anderson be held responsible?' To them, it was a sad accident. But to those who continue to suffer, it was not an accident. At least 3 other incidents of minor leakages had been reported at the same plant in a span of a few years before the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The leakage of gas in the night of 2nd December 1984, was because of negligence. Safety measures were not being followed at the plant. The container and valve had never been maintained. The amount of gas stored was more than permitted. It was a series and combination of many criminal doings on the part of the company.

To be honest with myself, I too had forgotten. It was the night mare that made me think of it again. I had never connected with any of those protesters. I saw them as nuances. I was unaffected. To a large extent, Mr. Raviraj's classes made me look at protests with a sympathetic attitude. Every dream has a meaning. For me, my nightmare was a call to connect to this Unwanted Development's Report. I remember now.

The number of affected people will decrease with every passing year. Justice is an unimaginable term now. For the poor, the major sufferers of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, it has always been this way. Justice exists in the worlds of the rich. But has Bhopal forgotten was the question that I asked myself. It was the question those lifeless eyes were asking. Have the lakes forgotten those tears that fell to its bottom? Has the earth forgotten the bodies that were buried in holes like leaves falling in autumn? Has the air forgiven the poison that was spew into it?

I wonder if that boy crossed someone else's dreams... How much have the lakes forgotten? How much do they remember?