A Breath of Fresh Air by Amulya Malladi
Hardcover: 214 pages; Ballantine Books 2002 ISBN: 0345450280
Reviewed by:  Shauna Singh Baldwin
 
I can't think of very many fiction writers who have addressed the 1984 Union Carbide methyl isocyanate gas leak in Bhopal India or shown its effects on ordinary people. In fact the accident hasn't received much attention in the West since A Killing Wind, a non-fiction book written in 1987 by Dan Kurzman.

If the Union Carbide gas leak had happened in the USA, killing 8,000 people within days and blinding or permanently injuring half a million,(1) no one would have dared propose a paltry initial settlement of $1.14 per person. But it happened in a poor country, so we have a double standard. In 1989, Union Carbide paid off all its victims with a mere 470 million. (Contrast that settlement amount with a settlement that took place a month later: Iraq's $27.3 million payment to the USA for 37 American sailors killed in the 1987 attack on the USS Stark.) And Warren Anderson, Chairman of Union Carbide is still free. According to a 2002 protest report by Greenpeace, "hundreds of tonnes of chemicals and obsolete pesticides were abandoned in Bhopal by the U.S. multinational when it fled the Indian city, after a gas leak at its factory caused the world’s worst industrial disaster." Dow Chemicals, owner of Union Carbide, insists as of May 2003 that the company is not liable for the spill.

Writers who tie their fiction to political events, and show how the lives of ordinary people are affected by them take huge risks. "A Breath of Fresh Air" begins with the Union Carbide Gas Leak in Bhopal, India in 1984 and continues into the present, showing the effects of the disaster. But Malladi doesn't take us through statistics or details, knowing we Americans are too squeamish to read about the actual suffering we cause. Instead, she shows us the personal suffering of Anjali, a middle class woman, and her child. Told from three points of view, Malladi shows the relationship between Anjali, her ex-husband Prakash and her current husband Sandeep. Some might say the book is not about Bhopal at all but about dealing with the suffering we inflict and receive.

Minor blemishes like spelling lieutenant "leftenant", putting all Indian words in italics in this day and age, and getting the month of Indira Gandhi's Golden Temple invasion wrong are forgivable in a first novel. "A Breath of Fresh Air" is a well-balanced, pitch-perfect novel you'll read in a few sittings. Open a box of Kleenex when you come to the end.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, the victims of Union Carbide's gas leak continue their fight for compensation. In March 2003 a United States court dismissed their claim for damages against the American multinational. Shed a tear for them as well.

Shauna Singh Baldwin

(1) Statistics from Greenpeace.org, as of 2003. Lower estimates are 3300, 4500, 6000.

SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN is an Canadian-American writer of Indian origin. Her books of fiction include What the Body Remembers (Doubleday, Knopf Canada, 1999) and English Lessons and Other Stories (Goose Lane Canada, 1996). Her next novel, The Story of Noor, will be published by Knopf in 2005.