double take

I know I posted this photo before, but there was something important I didn't point out. This might shake the situation here in Bhopal out of abstraction for some distant readers. Take a close look at Lila bai's kids, standing between her and me. Know that I am standing on the actual ground while the others are standing up in the high doorway. Lila bai is tiny -- she is about as tall as the middle of my chest.

As I mentioned when I first posted this photo, taken a few days ago, Lila bai and her kids live in J.P. Nagar, which is directly across a wide street from the abandoned Union Carbide factory. She and her family have lived there since long before the leak. The toxic gases that poured through these narrow lanes that night in 1984 wreak havoc on human hormones, an effect responsible for widespread menstrual, gynecological, and developmental problems here in Bhopal today. This is both from the gas and also from the poisoned water that Bhopal's poorest people are still forced to drink today.

Anyway, children born even years later to gas affected mothers can have severe problems. In December 1984, when Lila bai fled her home as the gas flowed through it, the daughter you see in the photo here (furthest back) was in her womb. Her son, standing up front in this photo, was born a few years later. Did you already do the math? The daughter and son you see in this photo are age 22 and 17.