Author: Dominique Lapierre
Javier Moro/
Publisher: Full Circle
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 376
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8176210919
Description
This book recounts the poignant human and technological adventure leading up to the tragedy in the ancestral Indian city of Bhopal. It was five past midnight on the night of the 2nd to the 3rd December 1984.
Translated from the French this book narrates the story of a monumental accident at Bhopal, the most magnificent capital of Madhya Pradesh in India.
It was five past midnight on the night of the 2nd to the 3rd December 1984, a terrifying cloud of toxic gas escaped from an American pesticide plant set in the heart of the ancestral Indian City of Bhopal, killing between sixteen and thirty thousand and injuring five hundred thousand people.
An Indian family driven from their land by a swarm of ravaging aphids – Three New York entomologists who invented a miracle pesticide – A giant chemical company that finds a deadly gas with which to manufacture it – Young Western engineers determined to rescue the third world from its famines – A plant ‘as inoffensive as a chocolate factory’ – The joys and festivities of the condemned of the slums – Eunuchs and princesses who bewitch the American engineers – A poetry loving workman who unleashes the apocalypse – The heroic doctors who die giving victims mouth to mouth resuscitation – A young Indian bride who escapes the flames of a funeral-pyre because of the small cross around her neck. Hundreds of such characters, situations and adventures are telescoped into this fresco, full of love, heroism, faith and hope.
This book reveals a real tragedy of crucial relevance to our times, which is also a warning to all those sorcerer’s apprentices who threaten the future of our planet.
.
Contents
Letter to the Reader
Map : " The City of Bhopal"
PART ONE - A NEW STAR IN THE INDIAN SKY
1. Firecrackers that kill, cows that die and insects the murder
2. The planetary holocaust wrought by armies of ravaging insects
3. A neighbourhood called Orya Bustee
4. A Visionary billionaire to the rescue of humanity's food
5. Three zealots on the banks of the Hudson
6. The daily heroism of the people of the bustees
7. An American Valley that ruled the world
8. A little mouse under the seats of Bhopal's trains
9. A position that smelled like boiled cabbage
10. They deserved the mercy of God
11. "A hand for the future"
12. A promised land on the ruins of a legendary kingdom
13. A continent of three hundred million peasants and six hundred
languages
14. Some very peculiar pimps
15. "A plant as inoffensive as a chocolate factory"
16. A new star in the Indian sky
17. 'They'll never dare send in the bulldozers"
18. Wages of fear on the roads of Maharashtra
19. The Lazy Poets' Circle
20. "Carbide has poisoned our water!"
21. The first deadly drops from the 'beautiful plant'
22. Three tanks dressed up for a carnival
23. "Half a million hours of work and not a day lost"
24. Everlasting roots in the black earth of the Kali Grounds
PART TWO - A NIGHT BLESSED BY THE STARS
25. A gas that makes you laugh before it kills you
26. "You will all be reduced to dust"
27. Ali Baba's treasure for the heroes of the Kali Grounds
28. The sudden arrival of costs-cutting gentleman
29. "My beautiful plant was losing its soul"
30. The fiancTs of the Orya Bustee
31. The end of a young Indian's dream
32. The vengeance of the people of the Kali Grounds
33. Festivities that set hearts ablaze
34. A Sunday unlike any other
35. A night blessed by the stars
PART THREE : THREE SARCOPHAGI UNDER THE MOON
36. Three sarcophagi under the moon
37. "What if the stars were to go on strike?"
38. Geysers of death
39. Lungs bursting in the heart of the night
40. "Something beyond all comprehension"
41. "All hell has broken loose here"
42. A half-naked holy man in the heart of a deadly cloud
43. The dancing girl was not dead
44. "Death to the killer Anderson!"
45. "Carbide has made us the centre of the world"
Epilogue
What became of them
Acknowledgement
"All that is not given is lost"