3rd December

This post comes late. About three weeks late. It should have come here on December 3. Many things are associated with the date. 3/12 stands, and will always stand - for only one thing - tragedy. What comes off it is a different story altogether.
I
Few are those schoolchildren who got an arbit family-holiday on 3/12 out of nothingness - often to enjoy hot pakodas with green chutney and bread-omlette instead of cold paratha-achaar in the recess. That lukewarm sunshine in the balcony... reading Agatha Christie lying on your back on a durry occasionally eating peas from the plate on ma's lap - or catching a match on TV - who gets that privilege in the middle of the week?
II
As a result of being from Bhopal and being in the law-school's torts classes is enough to get you nicknamed MIC, bhopal gas tragedy, bhopali and have (good-humored, well-intended) jokes thrown about over which everyone can have a good laugh.
III
Bhopal People's Hospital - multi-speciality-huge-building-bade-doctor-saheb hospital which is made especially for the gas tragedy victims. Passes supposedly issued to gas affected families for free treatment - sold, auctioned, misused - chalta hai!


Are we not missing a point somewhere? Come to Bhopal. The site where Union Carbide stood, still stands. There is some industrial raw material lying there - till today. Everyone in Bhopal still drinks the water mixed with methylisocyanate. YES.

THEY DIED
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They died, all of them. Their neighbors, a family of seven saw them all dying and saw each other being suffocated and to lead a life worse than dying. A life of impoverishment, a life of disease, a life of antipathy and a life of repeated death – to suffer till they finally die and rid of the gutter they are left to be in. This is no fiction, no story and no script of a drama; this is life, the life of those who were there in the small, insignificant city, somewhere, which suddenly became “famous”, for wrong reasons though! …The miniscule insignificant place, Bhopal.
I
The black birds fell dead on the ground,
While flying
Yes, I saw his father dying, while he sat beside,
Crying
I ran away, I ran away,
Sighing
To catch my life, which was flying away,
Flying.
As I ran and scurried about like maggots
Trying
To wriggle away from the hawk’s sharp sight,
Prying
I ran away, I ran away,
Lying
Telling myself I won’t die while I was
Dying.
II
The white cloud came about
I could not even shout
Scattered, shattered, strewn aghast
In the tumultuous rout
There was no scope of doubt
All I ate I now threw out
Writhing in pain I had never known
I felt life escaping through my mouth.
III
My three year old tugged on to my shawl
Brave one: with life he was in a brawl
While the eight month old thing in my womb:
In its mother’s blood, it found its tomb.

While I felt its blood, my blood, run down
I noticed, its father was not around
Gasping for breath with burning eyes
I saw its father with death, tying ties.

Holding on to my son I began to run
Under the white cloud of death, he succumbed.
On that cold night of December, I tried and tried
And finally writhing in pain, I died.

(C) AS