Bhopal ,the land of King Bhoja and shairi’s .I was quiet lucky enough to visit one of the Green city of India, Bhopal the capital of Madhya Pradesh during my engineering studies. When I landed there I was totally shocked.It wasn’t the city that I imagined, it wasn’t the land that I painted in my heart ,it was just an old city with her past remnants and old buildings which were almost ready to collapse. Small streets and congested roads , chattori gali, famous for chicken kebabs and packed with paan walas and the upper lake which is one of the Largest artificial lake of Asia ; all makes “City of Lakes” unique. I left Bhopal after spending 14 days and imprinted all the memories of this Great City in my heart.
But this wasn’t the real Bhopal .She kept herself hidden from the strangers .. There was a day when she suffocated and was unable even to take breath as the clouds of noxious gases covered her on 3rd dec 1984 which leaked from Union Carbide India Limited and the miserable part was that she also witnessed her own sons and daughters taken to the graveyard .Within hours Bhopal turned to be the worst industrial catastrophe ever in the history of Independent India .And the people who were responsible for this calamity flew and landed in safe shelters.
It was during the TED talk I met Dr. Satinath Sarangi ,founder of Sadbhavana trust which is for the victims of Bhopal tragedy. He revealed the real face of Bhopal .Even after years the new generation of Bhopal is still in the darkness .The air that they breathe ,the water they drink is not safe and it’s several multiples beyond the permissible limit. They are denied of all justice and Government seem to ignore the situation as if nothing had happened .There are children who never went to school and hasn’t even tasted the pleasure and excitement childhood . It’s only in Bhopal, unfortunately, where you see that the hospitals surpass the educational institutions. A country which safeguards all the rights of a citizen can’t ignore these victims they have to be given what they demand..They are the victims of a great disaster .Also we have to be with them to lend our support and let the devastated city regress to her illustrious era and let shairi’s and poems fill the sky of the “city of lakes”..
