Changing Lives In Bhopal

The Lifting of the Veils

In the years after the poison cloud came down from the factory, the veils covering the faces of the Muslim women of Bhopal started coming off too.

The Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (the Bhopal Gas-Affected Women Workers'

Organization), or BGPMUS, is the most remarkable and, after all these years, the most sustained movement to have sprung up in response to the disaster. The BGPMUS grew out of a group of sewing centers formed after the event to give poor women affected by the gas a means of livelihood. As they came together into the organization, the women participated in hundred of demonstrations, hired attorneys to fight the case against Carbide as well as the Indian government, and linked up with activist movements all over India and the world.

On any Saturday in Bhopal, you can go to the park opposite Lady Hospital and sit among an audience of several hundred women and watch all your stereotypes about traditional Indian women get shattered. I listened as a grandmother in her sixties got up and hurled abuse at the government with a vigor that Newt Gingrich would envy. She was followed by a woman in a plain Sari who spoke for an hour about the role of multinationals in the third world, the wasteful expenditure of the government on sports stadiums, and the rampant corruption to be found everywhere in the country.

As the women of Bhopal got politicized after the gas, they became aware of other inequities in their lives too. Slowly, the Muslim women of the BGPMUS started coming out of the veil. They explained this to others and themselves by saying: look, we have to travel so much, give speeches, and this burkha, this long black curtain, is hot and makes our health worse.

But this was not a sudden process; great care was paid to social sensitivities. When Amida Bi wanted to give up her burkha, she asked her husband. “My husband took permission from his older brother and my parents.” Assent having been given all around, Amida Bi now goes all over the country without her veil, secure in the full support of her extended family.

Her daughters, however, are another matter. Having been married out to other families, they still wear the burkha. But Amida Bi refuses to allow her own two daughters-in-law, over whom she has authority, to wear the veil at all. “I don't think the burkha is bad,” she says. “But you can do a lot of shameful things while wearing a burkha.” Half of the Muslim women still attending the rallies have folded up their burkhas for ever.

Sajida Bano's Story

Sajida Bano never had to use a veil until her husband died. He was the first victim of the Carbide plant: In 1981, three years before the night of the gas, Ashraf was working in the factory when a valve malfunctioned and he was splashed with liquid phosgene. He was dead within 72 hours. After that, Sajida was forced to move with her two infant sons to a bad neighborhood, where if she went out without the burkha she was harrassed. When she put it on, she felt shapeless, faceless, anonymous: she could be anyone's mother, anyone's sister.

In 1984, Sajiba took a trip to her mother's house in Kanpur, and happened to come back to Bhopal on the night of the gas. Her four-year-old son died in the waiting room of the train station, while his little brother held on to him. Sajiba had passed out while looking for a taxi outside. The factory had killed the second of the three people Sajiba loved most. She is left with her surviving son, now 14, who is sick in body and mind. For a long time, whenever he heard a train whistle, he would run outside, thinking his brother was on that train. Sajiba Bano asked if I would carry a letter for her to “those Carbide people,” whoever they are. She wrote it all in one night, without revision. She wants to eliminate distance, the food chain of

activists, journalists, lawyers, and governments between her and the people in Danbury. Here, with her permission, are excerpts that I translated:

Sir,

Big people like you have snatched the peace and happiness of us poor people. You are living it up in big palaces and mansions. Moving around in cars. Have you ever thought that you have wiped away the marriage marks from our foreheads, emptied our laps of children, bathed us in poison, and we are sobbing, but death doesn't come. Like a living, walking corpse you have left us. At least tell us what our crime was, for which such a punishment has been given. If with the strength of your money you had shot us all at once with bullets, then we wouldn't have to die such miserable sobbing deaths. You put your hand on your heart and think, if you are a human being: if this happened to you, how would your wife and children feel? Only this one sentence must have caused you pain.

If this vampire Union Carbide factory would be quiet after eating my husband, if heartless people like you would have your eyes opened, then probably I would not have lost my child after the death of my husband. After my husband's death my son would have been my support. But before he could grow you uprooted him. I don't know myself why you have this enmity against me. Why have you played with my life so much?What was I, a poor helpless woman, spoiling of yours that even after taking my husband you weren't content. You ate my child too. If you are a human being and have a human heart then tell me yourself what should be done with you people and with me. I am asking you only, tell me, what should I do?

Negative-Positive

The gas changed people's lives in ways big and small. Harishankar Magician used to be in the negative-positive business. It was a good business. He would sit on the pavement, hold up a small glass vial, and shout, “Negative to positive!” Then, hollering all the while, he would demonstrate. “It's very easy to put negative on paper. Take this chemical, take any negative, put it on any paper, rub it with this chemical, then put it in the sun for only 10 minutes. This is a process to make a positive from a negative.” By this time a crowd would have gathered to watch the miraculous transformation of a plain film negative onto an image on a postcard. In an hour and a half, Harishankar Magician could easily earn 50, 60 rupees ($2) in this business. Then the gas came.

It killed his son and destroyed his lungs and his left leg. In the negative-positive business, he had to sit for hours. He couldn't do that now with his game leg, and he couldn't shout with his withered lungs. So Harishankar Magician looked for another business that didn't require standing and shouting. Now he wanders the city, pushing a bicycle that bears a box with a hand-painted sign: 

“ASTROLOGY BY ELECTRONICE MINI COMPUTER MACHIN.”

Passersby, seeing the mysterious box, gather spontaneously to ask what it is. He invites them to put on the Stethoscope, which is a pair of big padded headphones attached to the Machin. Then the front panel of the Machin comes alive with flashing Disco Lights, rows of red and yellow and green colored bulbs. The Machin, Harishankar Magician tells his customers, monitors their blood pressure, then tells their fortune through the Stethoscope. The fee is two rupees (six cents). Harishankar doesn't

like this business; with this, unlike his previous trade, he thinks he is peddling a fraud. Besides, he can only do it for an hour and a half a day, and clears only about 15 rupees (43 cents).

Harishankar Magician is sad. He yearns for the negative-positive business. Once the activist Sathyu took a picture of Harishankar's son, who was born six days before the gas came. He died three years later. Harishankar and his wife have no photographs of their dead boy in their possession, and they ask Sathyu if he can find the negative of the photo he took. Then they will use the small vial of chemical to make of positive of their boy's negative, with only 10 minutes of sunlight.

From “Bhopal Lives” By Suketu Mehta

Published in: The Village Voice - 1991

(Photograph above : A Pre 1984 advertisement of Union Carbide)

The Business Of Gas

Jahar Lal doesn’t remember the night of the Bhopal gas tragedy, but he can’t forget it either. He was born on the side of a road, as his mother fled from the poisonous gases that swept through old Bhopal. When she finally reached a hospital with her newborn son, the doctors there christened him Jahar, or poison. The name stuck. He doesn’t like his name much. He has often thought of changing it but, he says, “It’s the name I’m famous by.” It draws 10-15 people every month to his small jhuggi in the mud-spattered lanes of Oriya basti.

More has been written on the Bhopal gas tragedy than any other disaster in India. In the 25 years that have elapsed, activists and government officials have surveyed the affected areas numerous times; curious tourists have wandered through the bastis in search of survivors’ tales; and journalists from around the world have scoured Bhopal for stories.The intense attention has, in its wake, created a network of attractions and occupations that survive on the memories, sites and effects of the disaster.

“There’s a whole chapter on me in Dominique Lapierre’s book,” says Gangaram, a gnarled old man, as we walk through the Oriya basti in search of Jahar Lal. He was also affected by the disaster and now survives on a few part-time jobs.He volunteers in a small community school in the Oriya basti, does the odd painting job, and spends his remaining time working as a guide for curious visitors.
“Everyone who comes to this part of Bhopal comes to me,” he says matter-of-factly. When we get to him, Jahar Lal is playing cards with a few friends. His clothes are threadbare, his sandals broken and he’s thin as a stick. He might be an attraction, but it hasn’t brought him much money. He works as a construction labourer for the 10-12 days he manages to get work.
But, he complains, he gets tired easily, suffers from a chronic cough and can’t put on any weight. The people of the basti are used to visitors, but a gaggle of kids still collects around us. Has the attention he’s got made a difference to his life? “People have been coming to see me for 10 years now, but nothing has happened,” he says. Someday, he hopes, someone will read one of the articles and give him a job. As we leave, Jahar Lal comes up to us and asks if we can spare Rs100 for “some medicines”.

A few kilometres away, Sanjay Verma is taking a foreign television crew through Arif Nagar, a shanty sprawl that sits by what used to be the solar evaporation pond of Union Carbide. He is their translator-cum-guide. Sanjay lost seven members of his family in the tragedy, and grew up in an orphanage in Bhopal.
He has taught himself fluent English, and now shows visitors the sites associated with Union Carbide. He is pursuing a degree in business economics, but has been guiding people for nearly four years now. On average, he takes 100 visitors around every year. It’s a good source of income for him.
His charges are Rs700 per day, but often “people give me much more than that”. His English has also improved significantly in the process. It was initially very difficult for him to return to the sites associated with his personal tragedy, but now he has gotten used to it.
“I feel that information on Bhopal needs to be passed on,” he says. Most media crews he takes to the factory, he adds, are horrified that the factory remains the way it was 25 years after the disaster.

But not everyone in this small network suffered in the tragedy. For every person that did suffer, there is another for whom this is a quick business opportunity. Mac is a resident of Bhopal who refuses to give me his real name. When we spot him, he is tearing down the dirt road in front of Jaiprakash Nagar with Miguel Legault, a photojournalist, perched precariously on his two-wheeler.


More pictures here

He claims to work in the pharmaceutical industry. He’s shown six people, including a Korean tourist, around affected areas such as Annu Nagar and Blue Moon Colony this year. “More often than not,” he says, “I’m the driver, guide and translator. I even get them a bottle of beer when they ask for it.”
In return he gets “some kind of gifts”. His motives, he claims, are not monetary. He wants to break the stranglehold that a few non-governmental organizations have on tragedy-related work. “Most of them get a lot of money through donations but promote a few people like Rashida Bee (profiled in Monday’s Mint story),” he says. “But this was a tragedy for everyone in Bhopal, not just a few people.”
His endeavour, he says, is to show people the neglected aspects of the tragedy. Mac seems to have forgotten that I’d seen him and Miguel briefly at Rashida Bee’s the previous day.
How do people find him? “You come to Bhopal and tell anyone that you want to see the Union Carbide factory, and you’ll find Mac,” he says cryptically.

Travel agencies in Bhopal also seem to have caught on to the opportunity. When I called him up, Rakesh Chopra of Radiant Travels Pvt. Ltd, one of the larger travel agencies in the city, said that he could easily arrange a guide for these areas. “We’ve shown many tourists these sights,” he says.
A guide would cost Rs1,750 per day. The biggest gains of this “industry”, however, have gone to the hundreds of dubious doctors, jhola chaap doctors as they are known in local parlance, who’ve set up shop along Chhola Road, a stone’s throw away from the factory. Every third establishment on the road is a clinic.
They sit cheek by jowl with tea shops, butchers and grocery stores. The garishly lit, matchbox rooms that they work from are crowded with a steady stream of patients. A bewildering number of them have degrees in Ayurveda.
Anil Tiwari claims that he is the only qualified doctor among the 85 who practise on this 2km stretch of road. “Doctors here get Ayurveda degrees since they’re easy to get, but all of them prescribe allopathic medicines,” he says. The majority of patients at the clinics seem to have a similar roster of problems— breathlessness, body aches, skin rashes and eye problems. They say that their problems started after the gas tragedy, but a number also blame severe groundwater contamination. “These quacks earn Rs1-2 lakh per month,” says Dr Tiwari, “and they pump patients full of steroids.”
P.D. Israni of Israni Dawakhana, was giving a woman an injection when I walked in. He claims to have a bachelor in Ayurvedic medicine and surgery (BAMS) and tells me that he only prescribes medicines according to his qualifications.
His charges per patient are Rs10-20. When I ask him about the injection he was giving, he turns defensive. “What can I do if the patient asks?” A hundred metres down the road, outside the Singhai Clinic, which advertises the services of Dr Singhai, BSc, BAMS, Ayur-Ratan, a patient is complaining.
He shows me a prescription that consists of a series of codes that only the in-house chemist understands. The medicines he takes out of a small plastic packet are allopathic, but none has a name. A similar story is repeated at every clinic in the area.
Patients who are entitled to free treatment at government hospitals don’t go there since the wait can often be long and the paperwork complicated. Some of them have also misplaced their “gas cards” and haven’t been able to get new ones made. They’re left with no alternative but to go to these clinics, they say.
K.K. Dubey, director of the Kamala Nehru Hospital, a government hospital for the gas-affected, confirms that such clinics are scattered across the affected wards. “The government has done nothing to control them,” he says.

The Bhopal gas tragedy seems to be becoming a small business. And as the 25th anniversary of disaster comes up, the profits are looking good.

-Akshai Jain @livemint.com

The Legacy Lives On

A legacy of the famous Begums of Bhopal may help usher in social reforms by sparing Shia families the exorbitant expense of weddings. The All India Shia Muslim Personal Law Board today announced it planned to issue a directive to community members to ensure that all Shia weddings take place in local mosques. Board chief Maulana Mirza Mohammad Athar said the directive was part of its national policy. If the directive becomes reality, it will reduce the cost of marriages by almost half. Most marriages are now held in expensive marriage halls and hotels where the bride’s family has to bear the cost of decoration, furniture, electricity and the feast, as well as pay the Qazi’s fee. So far, Bhopal was the sole exception, solemnising marriages inside mosques. The tradition of the nikah taking place in mosques in Bhopal dates back well over 100 years to the time three begums — Qudasiya, Shahjahan and Sultanjahan, all Sunnis — introduced sweeping reforms in Muslim society under their rule.

Even now, during the peak marriage season in winter, spring and autumn, dozens of nikahs are held inside Taj-ul-Masjid, Moti Masjid and other well-known mosques in the Madhya Pradesh capital. The nikahs are generally held before sunset and cost little. On most occasions, the guests are served laddoos or given a small box of sweets or dry fruits. Maulana Athar said the board planned to announce the “mosque-only nikahs” for the Shia community at its October 25 meeting in New Delhi. “We hope this will be passed in the meeting,” a cleric on the Shia board said. The Maulana told The Telegraph that mosques were regarded as “Khuda ki ghar (house of God)” and, therefore, marriages held there would have a different kind of sanctity. “There are countries in the world where mosques are major centres of marriage,” the Maulana said. “Modern-day marriages are extravagant. They impose a huge financial burden on the parents of the brides and grooms. We must stop this.” He added: “Let us admit that Muslims are engaged in a competitive show of pomp and wealth over marriages along with other communities. But Muslim marriages are supposed to be simpler and quieter.”

Families can still choose to have a reception for their guests, but it will no longer be obligatory if the nikahs are solemnised in mosques. Privately, many Shia and Sunni leaders in Lucknow and Bhopal said they were happy that community leaders were trying to accelerate social reforms even if it meant taking a leaf out of old customs and traditions.

(Picture above: Moti Masjid Bhopal)

Save Bhopal Lake

This good initiative, requires support from all. Let us do it for Bhopal. All comments about proposed course of action are welcome at the blog.

Happy Deepawali 2009

Bright, Sparkling, Glowing, Shining, Incandescent, Luminous.
May your year ahead be as bright as this Diwali

Now Iqbal

As said in an earlier post Allama Iqbal had an intimate relationship with Bhopal. Bhopal boasts of an Iqbal Maidan, and a monument dedicated to the Iqbal's legendary Shaheen. A "Yome Iqbal" or Iqbal festival is organised traditionally on 21st April. The Government of Madhya Pradesh has also instituted an award for Urdu literature by the name of Iqbal samman, which is the biggest award and probably the only one surviving for the Urdu literature.

According to PTI, after Jinnah, Iqbal, who penned the famous song 'Sare Jahan Se Achha' has come on the radar of saffron brigade with a BJP MLA demanding scrapping of 'Iqbal Samman' on grounds that it was the poet who had first advocated for the two-nation theory. "Iqbal had advocated the two-nation theory and it was he who had sown the seeds of division in the mind of Pakistan founder Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah," BJP leader Girija Shankar Sharma told PTI. Iqbal was also the 'Spiritual Guru' of Jinnah and he played a "more crucial role" in creating Pakistan than the latter, Sharma, representing Hoshangabad, alleged. "I have also written a letter to the State Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the party leadership demanding that the award in the name of Iqbal be scrapped.

Let us hope that this is an attempt to gain two minutes of fame by Mr. Sharma.

Dil Se

Madhya Pradesh boasts of a rich cultural heritage, biological diversity and architectural splendour. However, it's potential as a premier tourist destination had not been tapped until recently. The turnaround happened as a result of the “focussed, growth-oriented strategy” of the Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation Ltd (MPSTDC) headed by Ashwani Lohani (check his blog). When he took over as Managing Director in June 2006, the MPSTDC was on the verge of being dissolved. Since then it has bounced back as the “heart of Incredible India”. It's good to see state governments in India promoting tourism. The oldest cave paintings in the world, the oldest Buddhist stupa in the world and the largest wildlife sanctuary in Asia are all trying to invite travellers to come and visit Madhya Pradesh for sightseeing.

Bioscope



In 2006, Madhya Pradesh Tourism had released an ad called 'Bioscope’, which presented shots of the attractions of the state, apparently viewed through a bioscope. It invited travellers to come and visit the state, the shots strung together by a narrative. Now, after three years, another ad makes use of ‘eyes’ as the creative route to express the awe travellers experience in Madhya Pradesh. The eyes narrate the journey of the traveller and are complimented by a poetic song in the background. When the narration in the background is about sights one would see from a train, the model’s pupils become the wheel of the train, or if the narrative speaks of an antelope, the model’s eyebrows take the shape of its horns. Similarly, in the pool of her eyes, the viewer gets to see the intricacies of the Sanchi stupa. Both ‘Bioscope’ and ‘Eyes’ have been conceptualised by Ogilvy India.

Eyes



Keeping the focus on just a pair of eyes, the creative challenge was to have the eyes move to music and lyrics, reacting and mimicking to the myriad varied and rich travel experiences through Madhya Pradesh. The list include the ever elusive tiger, the rare swamp deer Barasingha, the white marble hills at Bedaghat, the prehistoric cave paintings at Bhimbetka, the erotic sculptures in the land of Khajuraho, the melting pot of Buddhism, Hinduism, mosques, minarets, majestic forts, palaces and so forth. The attempt was to keep the eye movements as natural as possible and keep the transition between the real and CG movements seamless. The spot requires a definite combination of live shoot and CG interception but keeping to the same innate and finesse of the subject matter.

When MFX first got the verbal brief, the execution began quickly on tests to identify possible visual directions. Ideas bounced between both teams. Among those deliberated upon were digital face projections, CG objects with stills and CG replacement over live shots. Eye actions were carefully plotted to the script and a quick eye animation was done for study and reference purpose. With various execution methods in line, the team puts together results and issues and studied the production pipeline to allow us to achieve client requirements.

The eyes remain the strongest visual backbone; it was inevitable that the search for the pair of “eyes” was most arduous. The team filtered through databases of talents as well as various groups of Indian classical dancers, targeting on the skill and flexibility of the talent moving their eyes. That was how MFX finally zeroed down to Shree Jeilachmee Appadorai, a Malaysia based South Indian model who has learnt Bharatnatyam and other Indian classical dances. Her natural brown eyes together with her ability to express through eye movements made her the perfect choice for the spot and also allowed us to revisit our execution. With her selected, we were able to remove all concerns with regards to not having the right talent in such a short period of time.

Pre production took up two weeks while the shoot was completed in one day. The technical aspects of the spot entail a large scope of detailed compositing work. It begins with stabilizing the shots, keeping the objects central in the frame and then matching shots from one to the other. Subtle morphing techniques were implemented to smoothen out the transitions, and computer generated camera movements were added to the otherwise still base plates. The ‘Barasingha’ eyebrows were created with matte painting and warping effects were injected on it for the transformation act. At certain portions of the film, the irises and pupils were replaced with 2D animated ones (for example when the song speaks about the journey in a train, the pupil of the model become the wheel of the train) which were carefully blended back into the base plate to ensure a seamless tapestry. As the camera travels into the iris, multi layering in 3D space takes action concocting the intricacies of the Sanchi Stupa. Coming towards the final Buddha piece, the face make-up made the base for the glistening Buddha face, however, much of the final look, shine, and shades were finished digitally.

Though it is largely a technical piece, MFX adhered to keeping aesthetics a priority. The concept of keeping the film piece minimal and emphasizing much on the eyes was a constant reminder to the team – thus steering the digital solutions within this scope. The team indeed tried to give the eyes greater animated movements; however, there was always a concern of how much and how little, also how unreal it may eventually become. MFX resolute to not cross the “excessive CG” border and opted for a simplistic seamless blend with live shots, which is also the core of what the creatives wanted at O&M.