On the night of December 2, 1984, the lethal gas, Methyl Isocynide, leaked out of the multinational plant of Union Carbide, in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, maiming alive, 3400 sleeping innocent dwellers of the town. This is the true story of a survivor
Wave of Death
He lay there on the ground,
More dead than alive,
As the wave of poison
Swept through the town that night:
At first he did not understand,
When he woke up-
Breath choking in his throat,
pricking sensation in his eyes...
In panic he got up
rushed to the kitchen
checked all the gas outlets,
Still the choking did not subside-
he opened the widows wide,
inviting inadvertently
the lethal Methyl isocyanide,
That had leaked from the
Multinational factory of Union Carbide:
The town of Bhopal
Was enveloped in the cloud
Of the deadliest poisonous gas on Earth…
He rushed out in terror
Inhaling more gas…
Breath would fail his lungs
As the intense burning raged
through his wind pipe;
he would open his mouth
for a gulp of fresh air-
only to take in more poison…
the throat would burn
and the fire would spread
to the pit of his stomach;
the flaming heat would scorch
the last acini of his lungs…
People ran haphazardly in utter confusion-
coughing their lungs out,
rubbing their eyes…
His eyes were speared with tiny fireballs
He closed them till the darkness
Blurred his perception
And he lost the sensation
of the ground beneath his feet…
He fell unconscious along with the rest
of the thousands of dwellers of the town,
On that fateful cold freezing night
of December the second, 1984…
The morning came
and the dawn witnessed
The town ere peacefully asleep, the night before,
Maimed alive in a stroke of fate,
Drowned in the eternal slumber of death.
Even the babies in the wombs did not survive!
He started coming to life:
Voices from some pit-less abyss from afar
dimly entered his auditory canal:
‘Dump the bodies in the Morgue!’
‘There are so many we have to be smart!’
Then the stench entered his olfactory senses-
He was being tossed in a truck
Full of the carcasses of the dead:
He tried to shriek, ‘I am alive!’
‘Don’t plunk me with the dead!’
But the voice choked in his seared throat
He tried to move, but his limbs
were as heavy as lead;
His desperation knew no bounds….
At last-
With super human effort
He opened his eyes!
‘Oh, he is alive!’
were the last words he caught
before the light went out of his eyes…
Two months later
when he stepped out of the ward-
frail, weak, diseased for life-
He could not believe his stars that he was still alive!
It is a wonder; he did not lose his sight!
Twenty-two yeas have passed:
He has creases in his brow
Grey has streaked his once raven hair.
He tells me he works for prevention of
Environmental pollution,
Now his life’s mission…
And is still struggling to get
Compensation for those hundreds of thousands
of victims of that night-
those who survived, and yet did not survive-
They still drink the poison
that has seeped into the water-plate
through the waste of abandoned factory that night…
I look at his turbid eyes
And feel the jabbing sensation
in my eyes-
The same pain that he had felt
on that fateful night-
And I see the anguish beyond
those once bright brown eyes-
Now glazed over by hind-sight…
Author: Zoya Zaidi),
Aligarh (UP), India
Copyright©: Zoya Zaidi
Besides the ones who died instantaneously, mostly women and children, another two hundred thousand people were effected who peacefully slept, unaware of their deadly plight. These people are still struggling to get compensation, promised by the Multinational Company of Union Carbide.
The water they drink is contaminated by the poison that has seeped into the water plate abandoned by the Union Carbide.
I met this survivor on a train to Hydarabad last year…
Photo of Bhopal Gas Tragedy Victim: http://www.netphotograph.com/img/thumbs/bhopal_10248-004-20060223.jpg
Poetry by Zoya Zaidi
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Written on 2006-12-02 at 21:50
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