When I arrived in Bhopal soon after the disaster, I was rather unprepared. Rushing to the city from the small town four hours away where I worked in an NGO, I had very little information (the news on the government-run radio station had drastically downplayed the tragedy), almost no local contacts and only a hundred-odd rupees in my pocket. I had along a few changes of clothes, because I didn't think I'd be staying in the city for much more than a week, helping out with emergency relief.
The previous day, in the early hours of 3 December 1984, 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocynate (MIC) and other lethal gases were accidentally released from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal that manufactured the pesticide Sevin. Later investigation pointed to water having entered and raising the temperature inside the storage tanks, thus leading to the deadly gas bursting from tanks that were not designed to manage under such pressure. The magnitude of the disaster was not fully known at the time; indeed, some of the impact is still coming to light 25 years later.
The day after the gas leak, the train to Bhopal was nearly empty, and the few on it seemed to have no knowledge of what had really happened at their destination. Yet as soon as I walked out of the railway station, I could see thousands of people in utter pain – their eyes swollen, tears streaming down their cheeks, huddled together with family and friends. I saw some attempting to walk with unsteady steps, before falling down – whether unconscious or dead, I didn't try to figure out. The railway station was just 1.5 kilometres from the Union Carbide plant, all of which was surrounded by densely populated communities that were badly affected by the leak.
The enormity of the pain all around, and my helplessness to offer any kind of assistance, was numbing. I just stood at the station exit and stared. My head and hands finally began to work again when I saw hundreds of people helping the victims. Young and old, mostly men, from various social and religious organisations and many more unaffiliated, were busy caring for the survivors. A bus stop just outside the railway station had become a medical relief camp, where survivors could get milk, fruit, water and words of comfort.