"All that is not given is lost"

This is a famous Indian proverb and one that is the theme of a book I recently finished reading.


Union Carbide was a huge, well-intentioned American corporation that invented a miracle pesticide. In the Indian city of Bhopal they built a giant plant to process it. But at five past midnight on December 1984, toxic gas leaked into the night air and was blown into the heavily populated city. And by dawn, over half a million people would be poisoned, leaving between 16 and 30 thousand people dead. That is what is written on the back cover of this touching book, an epic story of the world's deadliest industrial disaster.

Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro have written this devastating account of Carbide's activities in Bhopal leading up to the gas leak. They are quite skillful in telling the nearly forgotten story of the Bhopal gas tragedy and its aftermath. The story which presents the greatest ever scandal of the corporate world: a chronicle of staggering negligence crowned by a giant American corporation's utter indifference for the suffering of its victims.

One reviewer wrote....
"They not only show how the plant developed and ultimately failed, but we also get a glimpse into the lives of those living right next door to the secret killer. The book brings to life for us the slum neighborhoods of Bhopal, their vibrant life and many of their characters: Gangaram the leper, Pulpul Singh the moneylender, little Padmini the tribal girl from Orissa whose wedding took place on what was to become known as "The Night of Gas" or simply "That Night".

We are also introduced to the people who built and ran the deadly pesticides plant, and are helped to understand the complex sequence of decisions and blunders which led year by year, week by week and finally, minute by minute, toward catastrophe. As a result we feel the full horror of what happened at midnight on 2 December 1984, as cocktails of deadly gases began drifting in clouds through the densely populated city lanes, killing some ten to twenty thousand immediately (many of them with eyes and mouths on fire, drowning terrified in their own body fluids), leaving behind more than half a million injured.

To this day the company has never said exactly what gases leaked, and one reason for that is that it has never appeared in court (Union Carbide is officially a "fugitive from justice" in India having failed to turn up to answer charges in the Bhopal court), it has never been compelled to face questioning under oath, and the evidence related to the world's worst ever chemical disaster has to this day never been publicly heard."

This book will truly open your eyes to the reality of what unchecked and unaccountable corporate power means. Dominique Lapierre is one of my favorite authors who also wrote "City of Joy" and "Beyond Love". This book proves the same quality as his others and is a must read if you ask me. Not to mention half of all the royalties for the book go to the Dominique Lapierre "City of Joy Indian Foundation" to support humanitarian actions in Bhopal.