Disaster Persists 30 Years after Bhopal Gas Catastrophe – SPIEGEL ONLINE.
When the monsoon washes away the dust of the Indian summer from the landscape, huts and people of Bhopal, the dry basin behind the slum of J.P. Nagar turns into a lake. Laughing children swim in it, fishermen wait for the telltale tug on their lines to signal a catch, and buffalos greedily devour the succulent stems of water lilies.
In Hinduism, water is considered the source of all life. But in Bhopal, a cycle of death begins with each year’s rainy season.
“The people can’t see, smell or taste the poison,” says Rachna Dhingra, “but it’s there.” It’s in the water, in the flesh of fish and in the milk of the water buffalo, and it’s in the dark mud that slum residents scrape from the shores of the lake to fill the cracks in their houses. Dhingra, 37, is standing on a small hill in her blue kurta, a long traditional Indian garment, angrily trying to talk sense into the fishermen. “This is suicide,” she shouts.
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