For the media it is dated, for most of us it is dead and for the courts it is a case without a deadline. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy continues to distress in more ways than one. Now Anjali Deshpande brings the maya of methyl isocynate back in memories with a novel that pricks where it matters. A long time journalist and activist, Deshpande has seen the pain and protest from close quarters. Called “Impeachment”, like every emotional outpouring it is slightly loose, sometimes repetitive, but always honest. It hauls up the judiciary, questions the NGO movement and stirs the sentiments through characters you can touch and feel.
At a stage in life where she would rather enjoy “virtues of laziness” rather than indulge in programmed activism, Despande says she wanted to write on activism with a campaign as the backdrop. “I didn’t want it to be a blur. Many books I have read in literature, which give you so and so participated in national struggle. What did they do, you don’t get to know.”
An interesting mix of fact and fiction, the novel mines enormous details about the campaign and the legal process. “When I wrote the first draft it didn’t have too many facts. Then I showed it to a friend of mine. She remarked that you may know and people who were involved will know but a lot of people don’t know what happened. Some of the main points were already there but the chapter where Mukta gives a lecture on what happened till then was added later. Does it look like a ‘devicey-devicey’ sort of thing,” she asks. “ One didn’t find it a device forced on the reader but the large number of characters that Deshpande unleashes on us does take time to get used to. “When I was writing, the characters just started coming in. To a certain extent it was necessary to bring in multiple points of view.”
Outlining her characters, Desphande, a product of women’s movement of the ‘80s, says, “Suguna is very apolitical but the very stand she takes is so much in favour of status quo. She is very naïve in some sense. She thinks that convenience is everything…let’s don’t get too much into the fighting, let’s think positive. Avidha is so confused, but she at least takes a stand and it’s through her that we understand the problem. Mukta, the legal expert, is very firm about her opinion but eventually changes….”
Deshpande says three decades back Avidha was the common face of the activist but today the face is more like Suguna. “How many campaigns do you have where people try to push it beyond a point,” she asks citing the example of Anna’s movement. “For us activism was not a job that finished at 5 pm and the word NGO was not heard of. After doing our work and ghar ka kaam we still used to go to help people. These days NGOs are serious about the issue till the grant is coming. When it stops they move to the next project.”
Desphande says there are many American and European volunteers working in Bhopal and they ask reasons for our apathy. She agrees that the tragedy didn’t find mention in Indian literature and non fiction. “Indra Sinha’s work (‘Animal’s People’) is allegorical and he can’t really be termed as Indian writer. It is partly because the information is very hard to come by in India.”
Deshpande is one of the journalists who were present in the Union Carbide Corporation’s house in Bhopal on December 7, 1984, from where company’s chief Warren Anderson made a stealthy exit. Deshpande suggests that he was rowed across the lake. “We had not seen him but there didn’t seem any other way.”
She questions the role of the higher judiciary. “There was no reason to go to American courts. Indira Jaisingh rightly said it was like shopping for justice. It gave Carbide the crucial time to recoup.”
