I took the 32 hour train, two nights and one day, to Bhopal because I wanted to go to Sanchi, where there is temple complex built by the first great king of much of India, Ashoka, in the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. Bhopal is actually a pretty nice city. There isn’t much for the tourist to see, so it isn’t jaded by tourism. I had a cold and it was rainy and cold (Can you believe THAT?), so I hung out and did very little. I hotel next to mine had the best Indian food for a good price I’ve had yet, so I really didn’t mind just eating and watching TV. At any given time, there are at least three English language movies on TV, and there’s CNN and usually BBC, not to mention English language Indian TV and news. “The Young and the Restless” is popular. so is “Cheers”, Seinfeld”, Malcolm in the Middle”, and Everybody Loves Raymond”. The favorite movie genres are horror and shoot ’em ups.
The one thing I wanted to do was see the site of the Union Carbide chemical disaster. Because so many tens of thousands were killed or disabled, and the birth defect rate went so high, the tragedy is still very much a part of their lives. Only after talking to someone for a while, can you drag it out of him that to some extent the accident was the fault of Indians too. The Indians are great at avoiding responsibility of anything, large or small. People don’t have jobs here; they have positions. The buck stops nowhere. Anyway, the prevailing opinion is that the CEO of Dow, which bought Union Carbide and washed their hands of the whole thing, should hang and the victims compensated more that the $80 some of them got. More money was indeed given to the government, which is still sitting on it. I assume it’s trickling away. This is India.
Here is the factory site, mostly a goat pasture now, the wall in front, and the memorial garden.
The only other interesting thing that happened in Bhopal was while I was being lost trying to find the Union Carbide factory, I blundered into a funeral. I was invited to join the prayers, procession and cremation. I had seen cremations from afar, but not up close. I was discouraged from taking pictures, so there are none. It’s very real, watching the departed person placed in the middle of a very large pile of logs the set alight. After she had burned for about an hour, as is customary so evil spirits don’t enter her next reincarnation’s body, her eldest son smashed her skull with a big bamboo pole. Very real. One of her nephews then took me to the factory site. It was a very real day.