308 RüdigerKunow
experience severe health effects,including disabilities and birth defects.
Thisenvironmentallycompromisedsituationisalsocharacteristicofthe
fictionalKhaufpur,seventeenyearsafter"theKampani"releasedacloud
of poisonous fog with effects similar to those in Bhopal. Many
townspeople suffer from disabling illnesses and receive no medical
attention.
The novel's intradiegetic narrator, Animal, was a baby that fateful
night,andwhilehisparentsdied,thechemicalfog(inwaysthetextdoes
not reveal) caused his spine to twist so that he is forced to walk on all
fours, earning him the name "janvaar" (the Urdu term for beast or
animal). As an unusual but symbolic instance of an environmentally
disabledperson,AnimalscoreshighontheDALYindexasheisforced
to see the world from a non-human perspective: "The world of humans
is meant to be viewed from eye level. Your eyes. Lift my head I'm
starting at somebody's crotch. Whole nother [sic] world it's below the
waist" (2). From such a perspective, social participation is, to say the
least,restricted,andsoAnimalhasverylittlehumancompany.Heisnot
evensurewhetherhecanstillbeconsideredhuman:"Iusedtobehuman
once.SoIamtold.Idon'trememberitmyselfbutpeoplewhoknewme
whenIwassmallsayIwalkedontwofeetjustlikeahumanbeing"(1).
Fromsuchasubject(ed)position,Animaltellshisstorywhichisalsothe
story of Khaufpur, a post-apocalyptic place full of poisonous waste,
"whereeventheskyisbroken"(296).
However, Animal's Peopleis not a tale of personal victimhood
soliciting pity in the way Charles Dickens did in his social-critical
novels. More ambitiously, it seeks to trace the lines of connection and
dependence which not only made the environmental catastrophe
possible but which continue to determine its aftermath. And so, the
secondanchortothisnarrativeisaplacecalled"Amrika."Thechemical
plant a.k.a. "the kampani" was owned by an American corporation
which not only ran the company but also the city of Khaufpur so that
people wonder "how can foreigners at the world's other end, who've
never set foot in Khaufpur, decide what's said about this place?" and
what'sdone,ornotdone,onemightaddhere(9).Afterthedisaster,"the
IndustrialDisaster. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2002. Print.; and the
author'swebsiteFootnotes.IndraSinha.IndraSinha,2014.Web.28May2017.