It is always the hands that tell what happened here. I quickly learn to observe the speaker’s hands. Hands of the sick, of the survivors, of the victims’ parents. The hands of a girl unable to move her right ring and pinky fingers because of the effects of contamination. The lifegiving hands of Champa Devi Shukla. As the mouth speaks, the hands narrate, add emphasis, take you back to the origin of the story.

The story is that of the world’s deadliest chemical and industrial disaster: the tragedy of Bhopal, in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India.

Forty years after history’s worst industrial accident, survivors still live in its shadow.