December 1984
When I arrived in Bhopal soon after the disaster, I was rather unprepared. Rushing to the city from the small town four hours away where I worked in an NGO, I had very little information (the news on the government-run radio station had drastically downplayed the tragedy), almost no local contacts and only a hundred-odd rupees in my pocket. I had along a few changes of clothes, because I didn't think I'd be staying in the city for much more than a week, helping out with emergency relief.
The previous day, in the early hours of 3 December 1984, 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocynate (MIC) and other lethal gases were accidentally released from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal that manufactured the pesticide Sevin. Later investigation pointed to water having entered and raising the temperature inside the storage tanks, thus leading to the deadly gas bursting from tanks that were not designed to manage under such pressure. The magnitude of the disaster was not fully known at the time; indeed, some of the impact is still coming to light 25 years later.