Five Past Midnight in Bhopal Read online

  The muscular, ballerinalike thighs of Mexican bean beetles enable them to jump from stem to stem like circus acrobats, while yellow stem-borers haul themselves over leaves as laboriously as tortoises. The beetles that kill grains are threadlike; the tipulas that destroy vegetables look like mosquitoes engorged with blood. Moths with shimmering, scaly, double wings that live on lentils, hairy thrips that kill olive trees, scarlet acarus worms that are the terror of the orchard—all form part of a sinister, infinitely small jungle teeming with life.

  Because of their unlimited capacity to adapt, these insects are found in any environment or latitude, from the blazing sands of the African desert to the Arctic ice floes. Some have been responsible for many of humanity’s worst catastrophes: the grasshoppers that plagued ancient Egypt; the phylloxera aphid that wiped out the French vineyards at the end of the last century; the Colorado beetle that caused the Irish potato famine.

  These little creatures are unrelenting. The same maggot can travel from plant to plant in fields of corn, barley, oats or rye. Stems punctured and roots consumed by the bulimia of millions of larvae, cereal crops are destroyed on a vast scale before producing a single grain. Rice, which makes up 60 percent of the grain used as food for the world’s population, is a prime target for these plunderers. Rice whorl maggots with their cylindrical bodies, pink semiloopers, biting spring beetles, grayish-colored, legless tipula, the armyworm caterpillar, June bug larvae, leafhoppers, millipedes, threadworms—over a hundred species attack this single cereal grain. Among the most devastating is a moth called “pyralid,” meaning literally “insect living in fire,” whose long, grayish caterpillars dig tunnels in the stalks of rice until they topple over. No less destructive are certain vicious little creatures armed with sucking stylets and protected from predators by thick carapaces. As for weevils, they have probably gobbled up more rice, corn and potatoes than humankind has managed to consume since agriculture first began.

  For thousands of years, man has been conducting a desperate war against the authors of this destruction. Texts from ancient China, Rome and medieval Europe, all abound in extraordinary accounts of such battles. Lacking any effective means to ward off attack, our ancestors relied on magical and religious practices. Nepalese peasants posted notices in their paddy fields prohibiting insects from entry “on pain of legal proceedings.” Less naive but just as unrealistic, Roman peasants had pregnant women walk in circles around their fruit trees. Medieval Christians organized processions and novenas to counteract the cochylis and the corn and vine pyralids. Farmers in Venezuela beat the ears of their grain with belts in the hope that such rough treatment would strengthen their plants’ resistance to parasites. While Siamese farmers dotted their fields with eggshells pinned to sticks, those in Malaysia attached dead toads to bamboo poles to drive the white fly from their rice fields. Believing insect attacks to be the necessary consequence of sin in a divine and perfect creation, people took them to court. In 1120 in the Swiss city of Lausanne, caterpillars were excommunicated. Five centuries later a court in the French province of Auvergne condemned other caterpillars to go and “finish their wretched lives” in a place expressly provided for the purpose. Insects were brought to trial in Europe until 1830.

  Fortunately, other more realistic countermeasures had been tried. By flooding their fields at certain times of the year, peasants in the south of India had managed to drown millions of destructive insects. In Kenya and Mexico the simple idea of planting squares of maize as lures in the middle of other crops had saved vegetable and sorghum plantations. Elsewhere the use of predatory insects had won some splendid victories. Texts dating from the third century A.D. report that Chinese growers infested their lemon trees with ants, which ate Vanessas, the richly colored butterflies that sowed terror in their orchards. Fifteen centuries later, the mandibles of a killer scarabaeid beetle saved the citrus plantations of California from the ravages of the Australian fly.

  At the end of the nineteenth century, vegetable-based materials such as nicotine or the pyrethrum flower, and mineral substances such as arsenic and copper sulfate, supplied peasants with new weapons, which they called by the magic names of “insecticides,” and “pesticides.” With the discovery in 1868 that spraying the arsenic-based dye Paris green on cotton parasites had a guaranteed effect, the United States launched a frenzied campaign to commercialize natural poisons. By 1910, the new American pesticide industry was worth more than $20 million. Lead-arsenate-based products were then added to Paris green. The first world war brought about explosive expansion in other directions. With German submarines preventing the importing of Paris green and the war effort commandeering arsenic for the manufacture of munitions, flares and combat gas, insecticide producers turned to the chemical industry.

  Only too delighted to find an outlet for petroleum byproducts, chemists were quick to take up the challenge. Large European and American companies invested huge sums of money in research into synthetic molecules that could destroy predatory insects. Thus the period between the two world wars witnessed the advent of a string of chemical families, each with new capabilities for exterminating parasites. The goal appeared to be reached on the eve of the second world war when Herman Mueller, a Swiss chemist trying to come up with an effective contact insecticide, discovered a molecule that seemed to meet his requirements. It bore the unwieldy name of dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane. Fortunately the Swiss scientist found a shorter, more convenient label. The insect world was about to tremble; DDT had been born. This spectacular discovery earned its author the Nobel prize for physiology and medicine, since DDT would bring about the mass extermination of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the field of military operations, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. At the end of the war this organic insecticide was put to the civilian use for which it had been invented. Field studies showed that it swiftly destroyed an extensive range of plant-eating insects, and thus immediately increased agricultural yield. Experiments carried out in New York and Wisconsin revealed that the yield from potato fields treated with DDT shot up by 60 percent. The euphoria that greeted these gratifying results subsided when scientists discovered that DDT also contaminated the earth, mammals, birds, fish and even people. It was soon declared illegal in most Western countries. In Europe and the United States, legislation was introduced to oblige pesticide manufacturers to respect the increasingly draconian protection and safety standards. Under pressure from an impatient agricultural industry, they geared their research to finding products that would reconcile the destruction of insects with a level of toxicity tolerable to humanity and its environment. An extraordinary adventure was about to begin.

  3

  A Neighborhood Called Orya Bustee

  After the fifty-nine hours in the colorful congestion of an Indian train, the exiles from Mudilapa at last reached their journey’s end: Bhopal. In the months that followed India’s independence, this prestigious city had been made the capital of Madhya Pradesh, a state a little larger than California and situated at the geographical heart of the country. Padmini Nadar and her family had marveled continuously on the beauty of the countryside they traversed, especially as they drew nearer to the city. Wasn’t it in these deep, mysterious forests that the god Rama and the Pandava brothers of Hindu mythology had taken refuge, and that Rudyard Kipling had set The Jungle Book? And wasn’t it true that tigers and elephants still roamed the jungle? A few miles before their destination the railway had run past the famous caves of Bhimbekta, the walls of which were decorated with prehistoric aboriginal rock paintings.

  The station where the immigrants from Orissa got off was one of those caravanserais swirling with noise, activity and smells, typical of India’s large railway terminals. It had been built the century before. Not even the most colorful festival in Adivasi folklore could have given Padmini or her family an inkling of the celebrations staged in that station on November 18, 1884, its inauguration day. A British colonial administrator had proposed linking t
he ancient princely city to British India’s rail network after a terrible drought had caused tens of thousands of local people to die of starvation, deprived of aid for want of communication lines. History has largely overlooked the name of the flamboyant Henry Daly who was responsible for giving Bhopal the most valuable asset an Indian town could then receive from its colonizers. A retinue of britannic excellencies in braided uniforms studded with medals and all the local dignitaries in ceremonial costumes had come running at the invitation of the begum, a slight woman hidden beneath the folds of a burkah, * who ruled over the sultanate of Bhopal. The festivities went on for three days and three nights. Along railway tracks decked out with triumphal arches in the red, white and blue of the British empire, crowds of local people had gathered to greet the arrival of the first seven carriages decorated with marigolds. On the platform stood a double file of mounted lancers, companies of turbaned sepoys and the musicians of the royal brass band. Alas, there was no radio or television in those days to immortalize the speeches exchanged by the representative of Victoria, “Empress of her subjects over the seas,” and the sovereign who presided over this small corner of British India. “I offer up a thousand thanks to the all-powerful God who has granted that Bhopal enjoy the signal protection of Her Imperial Majesty so that the brilliance of Western science may shine forth upon our land …” the Begum Shah Jahan had declared. In response, the envoy from London extolled the political and commercial advantages that the railway would bring, not only to the small kingdom of Bhopal, but to the whole of central India. Then he raised his glass in a solemn toast to the success of the modern convenience, for which the enlightened sovereign had provided the funds. A firework display crowned the occasion. That day a piece of ancestral India had espoused itself to progress.

  For a long moment the Nadars hesitated without daring to take a step, so overwhelmed were they by the scene that greeted them as they got out of the train car. The platform was packed with other dispossessed peasants who had come there, like them, in search of work. The Nadars found themselves trapped in a tide of people coming and going in all directions. Coolies trotted about with mountains of suitcases and parcels on their heads, vendors offered every conceivable merchandise for sale. Never before had they seen such sumptuousness: pyramids of oranges, sandals, combs, scissors, padlocks, glasses, bags; piles of shawls, saris, dhotis;* newspapers, all kinds of food and drink. Padmini and her family were bewildered, astounded, lost. Around them many of the other travelers appeared to be just as disoriented. Only Mangal the parrot seemed completely at ease. He never stopped warbling his joy and making the children laugh.

  “Daddy, what are we going to do now?” Padmini asked, visibly at a loss.

  “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” added her brother, Gopal, who was holding the parrot’s cage above his head so that his parents would see him in case they got separated.

  “We should look for a policeman,” advised the old man Prodip, who had been no more able than his son to decipher the contract the tharagar for the railway had given them.

  Outside the station, an officer in a white helmet was trying to channel the chaotic flow of traffic. Ratna cut a way through to him.

  “We’ve just arrived from Orissa,” he murmured tentatively. “Do you know if anyone from there lives around here?”

  The policeman signaled to him that he had not understood the question. It was hardly surprising; so many people speaking different languages got off the train at Bhopal.

  Suddenly Padmini spotted a man selling samosas, triangular fritters stuffed with vegetables or meat, on the far side of the square. With the sixth sense that Indians have for identifying a stranger’s origin and caste, the little girl was convinced she had found a compatriot. She was not wrong.

  “Don’t worry, friends,” declared the man, “there’s an area around here occupied exclusively by people from our province. It’s called the Orya Bustee * and the people who live there are all from Orissa like you and me, and speak Orya, our language.” He waved an arm in the direction of the minaret of a mosque opposite the station. “Skirt that mosque,” he explained, “and continue straight ahead. When you get to the railway line, turn right. You’ll see a load of huts and sheds. That’s Orya Bustee.”

  Ratna Nadar bowed down to the ground in thanks, touching the samosa seller’s sandals with his right hand, which he then placed on his head.

  Padmini rushed to the parrot’s cage. “We’re saved!” she cried. The bird responded with a triumphant squawk.

  As soon as he saw the little caravan approaching, the man seized his walking stick and went out to meet it. He was a hefty fellow of about fifty with a curly mop of hair and sideburns that joined the drooping ends of his mustache.

  “Welcome, friends!” His soft voice belied his imposing appearance. “I guess it’s a roof that you’re after here!”

  “A roof would be a lot to hope for,” stammered Ratna Nadar apologetically, “but perhaps just somewhere for me and my family to camp.”

  “My name is Belram Mukkadam,” the stranger announced, pressing his hands together in front of his chest to greet the little group. “I run the Committee for Mutual Aid for neighborhoods on the Kali Grounds.” He pointed in the direction of the string of sheds and huts on the edge of a vast empty expanse along the railway line. “I’ll show you where you can settle and build yourself a hut.”

  Mukkadam was not an Adivasi, but he spoke the language of the people of Orissa. Thirty years earlier he had been the very first person to settle on the wasteland on the northern side of the city, bordering on what had once been the immense parade ground of the Victoria lancers, the cavalry regiment of the nawabs of Bhopal. The hut he had built with the help of his wife Tulsabai and their son Pratap had been the first of the hundreds that now made up three neighborhoods of improvised homes, in which several thousand immigrants from different Indian regions lived. Apart from the Orya Bustee, there was the Chola Bustee and the Jai Prakash Bustee. Chola means “chickpea.” It was by planting chickpeas that the first occupants of the Chola Bustee had escaped starvation. As for Jai Prakash, it was named after a famous disciple of Mahatma Gandhi who had taken up the cause of the country’s poor.

  His position as dean of the three bustees had earned Belram Mukkadam a special prerogative, one never contested by the various godfathers of the local mafia who controlled those poor neighborhoods. And since there was no municipal authority to intervene, Mukkadam was the one who allocated newcomers the plots on which to make their homes.

  Leading the Nadar family along a path that ran beside the railway track, he pointed to an empty space at the end of a row of huts.

  “There’s your bit of ground,” he said, tracing a square three yards by three yards in the dark earth with his tamarind stick. “The Committee for Mutual Aid will bring you materials, a char-poy and some utensils.”

  Once more Ratna Nadar prostrated himself on the ground to thank this new benefactor. Then he turned to his family.

  “The great god’s anger is spent,” he declared. “Our chakra* is turning again.”

  Orya Bustee, which Padmini and her family would now call home, was the poorest of the three poverty-stricken neighborhoods that had grown up along the parade ground. In the labyrinth of its alleyways, one sound singled itself out from all the others: that of coughing. Here, tuberculosis was endemic.

  There was no electricity. There was no drinking water, no drainage and not even the most rudimentary hospital or clinic. There were scarcely even any vendors, except for a traveling vegetable salesman and two small tea stalls. The sweet milky tea sold in clay beakers was an important source of energy for many of the local residents. Apart from four skeletal cows and several mangy dogs, the only other animals were goats. Their milk provided precious protein for their owners, who, in winter, had no reservations about swaddling their animals in old rags to prevent them from catching cold.

  Yet for all its poverty, Orya Bustee was unlike any of the other slums. F
irstly, it had managed to maintain a rural feel, which contrasted with the jumble of huts made out of planks and sheet metal in the other neighborhoods. Here all the dwellings were made out of bamboo and mud. These katcha, or “crude earth,” houses were decorated with geometric designs drawn in rice paste to attract prosperity, just as they were in the villages of Orissa. These houses gave this area of concentration-camplike congestion an unexpected rural charm. The former peasants who had taken refuge there were not marginalized people. In their exile they had managed to reconstruct their village life. They had built a small temple out of bamboo and baked mud to house an image of the god Jagannath. Next to it, they had planted a sacred tulsi, a variety of arborescent basil with the power to repel reptiles, especially cobras with their deadly venomous bite. The neighborhood women were particularly devoted to Jagannath: those suffering from sterility would make offerings to him in the hope to be cured. Here, as elsewhere in India, faith manifested itself in an uninterrupted succession of ritual festivities. A boy’s first tooth, his first hair cut; a girl’s first period, engagement, marriage, mourning; Diwali, the festival of lights, the Muslims’ Eid and even Christmas—all of life’s events, all festivals secular or religious, were publicly marked. For all their lack of education and material poverty, the Adivasis of Orya Bustee had managed to maintain the rites and expressions of the social and religious life that made up the rich and varied texture of their homeland.

  4

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