Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain
I had the immense pleasure of working on the end credit song for the Bollywood hit film “Bhopal: A Prayer For Rain“. It was my first opportunity to work with incredible singer Shilpa Rao and performer Aditya Balani. You can hear the song in the end credits for the film.
Synopsis
In 1945 Union Carbide Corporation helped build the atomic bomb. In 1984 they built a time-bomb…
Starring Martin Sheen, Mischa Barton, Kal Penn and a powerful ensemble cast, “Bhopal A Prayer For Rain” is an epic, ‘whodunnit’ that exposes the shocking events that led to the biggest man made industrial disaster in history, in which as many as 10,000 people were killed in one night and for those that did survive, the tragedy had just begun.
Dilip, a rickshaw driver in Bhopal, India, lands himself a job at the Union Carbide plant. It is a chance to prove his worth to his family and pull them out of poverty. The job is tough with long hours; everyone is desperate to hold on to their pay cheque and so Dilip keeps quiet when he notices managers at the plant ignoring safety standards.
Dilip’s long time friend, Motwani, a tabloid journalist knows that Bhopal residents complain of the constant stench in the air and wake up at night choking from the gas. He is on a mission to expose what he believes is a deadly time bomb ticking away in his home town. He feels as if no one will listen but when he meets feisty American journalist, Eva, he sees a ray of hope and persuades her to confront Carbide executive Warren Anderson.
As Eva and Motwani endeavour to delve deeper into Carbide’s activities, Dilip is using every resource necessary to pay and plan for his sister’s wedding. When the wedding night arrives the family are full of joy and celebration as two families join together as one. But as the music plays an invisible catastrophe is working its way throughout the town and wedding party. One by one the guests start to feel unwell the largest tower at the Carbide plant spews poisonous gas into the night air; one by one they collapse; and one by one they unknowingly become a statistic in the world’s largest chemical disaster to date.
Nearly thirty years later as the plant stands as a ghost-like constant reminder, the water in Bhopal is still contaminated and one person a day dies as a direct result of the tragedy, Eva visits the now retired Anderson. Will he finally bow down and apologise? Or will he continue to deny that Carbide had any part to play…?
A disaster that set a deadly precedent for multinational corporate activity in the developing world and revealed a poisonous corruption at the heart of India, the world’s largest democracy – this is a story that demands to be seen.
