Their story is the story of Bhopal

Excerpt:
Bhopal: The intervening night of 2-3 December 1984 changed life for everyone in Bhopal. But not even in her wildest imagination had Rashida Bee thought that looking back 25 years later, she would find it difficult to recognize herself.

“If it hadn’t been for that night,” she says, “the world could have come and gone, and I’d still be sitting at home in purdah, rolling beedis by night and doing housework by day.” Her colleague Champa Devi Shukla nods in silent agreement. She, too, would have been just another housewife in a basti in Bhopal.

(Leadership qualities: Champa Devi Shukla (left) and Rashida Bee are managing trustees of the Chingari Trust that works with children with congenital defects born to survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy. Madhu Kapparath / Mint)

Instead, they now represent the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy at conferences and demonstrations across the world. In 2004, they received the Goldman Environmental Prize, given to grass roots activists, for the work they have done with Bhopal’s poor. And they’re managing trustees of the Chingari Trust that works with children with congenital defects born to survivors of the disaster.

Rashida Bee hadn’t heard of Union Carbide Corp. till the night she woke up with a burning sensation in her eyes. For a while she thought someone in the neighbourhood was burning chillies, but then she heard the sounds of people running. “That night,” says Champa Devi, completing Rashida Bee’s sentence, “we all prayed for death.”

Also Read 25 yrs on, a walk through the Carbide plant

She doesn’t remember much of what happened next, but when she finally managed to open her eyes, she found most members of her family missing. After a frantic search, a few were tracked down at a hospital 150km from Bhopal. Seven were found in the morgue.

Champa Devi was luckier; none of her family died that night. She fled with her husband, three sons and one daughter, clambering over bodies of the dead to escape the spreading gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticides plant.

In the middle of that month, Rashida Bee’s family went away to Hoshangabad for six months, and Champa Devi’s stayed with relatives in different parts of the country.

Both remember the months after they came back to Bhopal as being the worst. Every member of their families was suffering from effects of exposure to the gas leak. Some found it difficult to breathe while others couldn’t summon the energy to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. There was no money and no work to be had.

Only chance

Then, on 15 November 1985, a few government inspectors came to their neighbourhoods. They were offering women training at a stationery centre that the government was starting as part of its rehabilitation programme for victims of the disaster.

Neither woman had ever worked outside her house. They had no idea what to expect, but they knew that this was their only chance.
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