But the source of this particular evil was, in fact, the factory. An accident there had sent forty metric tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a lethal chemical, into a runaway reaction that released a toxic gas. The gas filled the night air of Old Bhopal and entered into people’s bloodstreams, where it then dissolved into hydrocyanic acid, attacking the lungs, respiratory tracts, kidneys, liver, and brain. In order to get away from the choking, burning air, people abandoned their houses and tenements. They ran away from the slums, out of Old Bhopal, across the lake and the hills that divide New Bhopal from Old Bhopal and that would keep the city’s wealthier residents relatively safe even as the poor choked on the fumes. They poured into the new city, into the railway station, some dying in the stampede, others succumbing to the fumes. So many people died that mass cremations and burials took place, bodies piled one on top of another. Corpses were loaded onto trucks and hastily driven out of the city.
It is possible to say, in the case of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, that three people died immediately at the site of the explosions and that twenty-eight more died from acute radiation syndrome within the year. It is also possible to say, with regard to the accident at Fukushima in 2011, that so far there have been no radiation-related deaths. But it is not possible to say, in spite of all those corpses and the many years that have passed, exactly how many people died in Bhopal from the MIC leak. The Indian government initially claimed extremely modest figures for deaths and injuries, but there are estimates, based partly on the number of funeral shrouds sold the day after the accident, that at least 3,000 people died within the first twenty-four hours. After that, the assessment of fatalities fluctuates wildly, but it’s likely that more than 20,000 people have died in the past thirty years from effects of the gas.
The fallout of the leak extends well beyond even that, with perhaps half a million survivors impaired with breathing difficulties, vision problems, spells of unconsciousness, and psychological disorders. Women suffer a high rate of miscarriages, and children are prone to birth defects. The abandoned factory overruns its boundary walls even if it appears to be sequestered; chemicals stored on site or dumped into pits seep into the groundwater and make their way into the tube wells and taps of surrounding slums. Today, thirty years after the events of December 2 and 3, 1984, the factory continues to pulsate with its evil magic.