The Breath Thief of Bhopal - By Steve Raines


In Bhopal's JP Nagar shanties, dusk on December 2, 1984, carried the usual hum: vendors hawking last chai, mothers like Leela Bai stirring dal over kerosene stoves. 

Leela, 28, her sari faded from factory laundry shifts, hummed a lullaby to her brood—Ravi, 10, already dozing with schoolbooks under his mat; twin girls Priya and Meera, 5, giggling over a shared rag doll.

 "Hush now, the factory whistle's blown—sleep steals the day's ache," she murmured, dousing the lamp. 

Two kilometers away, at Union Carbide's dimly lit control room, Raju Patel mopped brows with colleagues. "Tank E610's humming odd tonight—pressure tick up?" he asked supervisor Vikram Khan.

 "Routine. Fridge unit's offline months now—saves bucks. Valves hold," Vikram snapped, ignoring the drained coolant and six dead safety redundants. 

Families bedded down, unaware water had infiltrated the MIC tank at 10:45 PM, igniting a runaway boil.

By 12:40 AM, the plume breached—no sirens, alarms silenced to dodge "false panic." 

Heavier than air, methyl isocyanate pooled first in alleys, then seeped under doorless huts, invisible as death's breath. 

Leela stirred faintly, mistaking the first chili-sting for nightmare fog. Ravi bolted upright: 

"Ma! Eyes burn—like needles! Can't... draw breath!" She fumbled blindly:

 "Ravi? Girls—where's the door? It's smoke—hold me!" Priya whimpered once, then gurgled silent, lungs flooding with edema. 

Meera thrashed beside her, tiny fists clawing air. Outside, screams pierced the night: "Bhagwan! 

The air eats flesh!" Old Ramdas, Leela's neighbor, never roused—gas drowned him supine, eyes boiled white. 

Raju from the plant staggered into the streets, retching: "E610 blew—run, it's MIC, pure poison!" 

Crowds surged sightless, trampling fallen dogs, babies, each other—500,000 exposed in minutes.

Dawn revealed hell: streets of corpses, twisted in final agony, eyes hemorrhaged, froth-caked mouths.

Leela crawled from her hut, rasping Ravi's name, cradling Priya's still form:

 "My lights... gone. Why us?" Hospitals choked with the gasping—doctors yelling, "No antidote—flush eyes, pray!"

That night claimed 3,500 outright; decades stole 20,000 more via cancers, blindness, twisted-limbed babies from poisoned wombs. 

In 2025, as crews finally torched the site's buried toxins, survivors like Leela—now 69, voice a wheeze—protest: 

"It killed our sleep. Clean the earth? Never cleans the soul." Raju, haunted retiree, mutters to ghosts: "I smelled it coming. Said nothing."

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