photos from Bhopal

I took this yesterday, a few minutes after sunset over Bhopal's larger lake. Those birds flying everywhere are actually bats, if you can believe it. Huge bats -- like flying cats, almost. Chamgaadar is the Hindi word. Not a bad name, but my favorite still belongs to the Spanish language - "murcielago." I collect foreign names for "bat." Anyway, these were all over and it took a while for me to realize they were not huge black seagulls or pelicans or something. In addition to the ones diving all over above our heads, there were hundreds of them hanging upside down in all the trees lining the shore of the lake. Some of them were moving around, climbing on the branches like monkeys with wings. I've never seen bats so large. They reminded me of gremlins or something.


Today I visited Lila bai, who was on the padyatra. She is so boundlessly sweet I can't get enough of her. She had told me she lives in J.P. Nagar, near the Union Carbide factory, next to the memorial statue, and that I should just go near the statue and ask people where she was. People can be pretty rough in that neighborhood (I've had rocks thrown at me), but I got several people to point me in the right direction. I just kept asking where "Lila bai who went on the padyatra" lived. After several turns down narrow lanes filled with people sitting in their doorways waiting for the sun to set, I eventually spotted Lila bai in her doorway. "Bai", by the way, just means "sister" - it gets attached to a lot of names here. Anyway, Lila bai was thrilled to have company because that's just how she is. I had brought new volunteer from France named Anna. The kids in the photo above are two of Lila bai's three children.

Lila bai has lived there with her family for about 30 years. It is only a hundred feet or so from the wall of the Union Carbide factory, and this whole area was completely flooded with the heavy MIC gas that night. This would have been a spot where almost everybody was killed. Hard to imagine as you sit there drinking chai. And it's hard to imagine how people who live there, like Lila bai, could still be as warm and kind as she is.


Neighborhood kids outside Lila bai's house, curious as ever about our presence there and the camera.