It was the starting of winters for us..I was at the busstop..as usual..waiting for the school bus…ready to embark on the new day ..all of us kids around the same age would spend the time just before the arrival of the bus playing...but why was the bus not arriving..we had exhausted our quota of all the games...
And then out of the bleary mist we saw it slugging at slow pace towards us..possibly around 7.00 Am..but wait why is it empty...it was not supposed to be ..since ours was the last stop where it stopped to pick up students for the school that day.
The bus finally stopped and out popped the driver's head ‘ koi gas leak hui hai city area mein Chutti hai’ (some gas has leaked in the old city area of bhopal so a holiday has been declared) …the holiday lasted for a fortnight ....fortunately for me my family lived in the new part of Bhopal..just beyond the BHEL township. and that fateful night the wind was blowing in the opposite direction…
Union Carbide factory emitted poisonous gas which killed thousands of people…maiming others …in a single night and killing thousands more in the years to come. It was situated in the older parts of the Bhopal…near the railway station…I heard later that the Station master died that night…trying to stop all the trains from passing from Bhopal…Bhopal being a junction has quite a number of trains passing it...
I guess the impact was lost on me at that age…I understood it only much later…
And the irony Union Carbide is back in business in India with a new name.
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