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“That night”—the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster in which methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant, killing and injuring thousands—is at the core of Animal’s People. It is described by Animal as the night “which no one in Khaufpur wants to remember, but nobody can forget” (1). It is the reason Animal’s back is bent and why he has no parents, the reason Somraj’s wife and son are dead and why Somraj no longer can sing, and the reason so many people continue to suffer with debilitating illnesses. Animal believes that without that night, he might even be with Nisha: “[I]f only things were different with me, if I could walk upright, it might be my praises she sang instead of Zafar’s” (36). Zafar, Nisha, and Somraj have made life’s work out of helping those injured by the events of that night.
The novel contains many reminders of the ongoing effects of that night. Because the factory was never cleaned, new generations of people continue to be harmed, including little Aliya, who dies at the end of the novel. In Paradise Alley, Elli and Animal witness a woman expressing her breastmilk onto the ground, saying she “won’t feed [her] kid poison” (107). When Animal climbs through the factory, he hears the voices of the dead and imagines people running through the streets that night; the night of the factory riot, he hears them moaning about their injustice, demanding restitution for their suffering.
That night is repeated when the people riot at the factory and the lingering chemicals are released into the air once again. Ma Franci, who believes it’s the Apocalypse, is one of three people killed as she helps the people protect themselves. Though saddened by her death, Animal is relieved that most Khaufpuris survived, and goes back to his “familiar life” in which “[e]verything is the same, yet everything changed” (364). The Kampani bosses still escape appearing in court, and “[t]here is still sickness all over Khaufpur” (365). “That night” represents ongoing injustice, suffering and dehumanization, and while the people achieve some success in avenging themselves, the lack of tangible progress in the court case illustrates the scope of that night’s damage.
The Kampani is a symbol of unchecked corporate power. The Kampani has managed to escape punishment, claiming the Indian court has no jurisdiction over them and refusing to show up in court. According to Animal’s friends, politicians are “in the Kampani’s pockets” (112). The strength and invincibility of the Kampani is represented in Zafar’s dream, in which a crow shows him the Kampani’s building in America, a building guarded by tanks and jets, “stuffed with banknotes” (229), and full of lawyers and public-relations consultants who ensure its continued power. When Khã-in-the-Jar tells him the Board of Directors seeks “[t]o undo everything the Kampani does” (237), Animal laughs, telling him the Kampani “is too big and powerful, it cannot die, it will go on for all eternity” (237). This statement, as well as the crow’s statement that “[t]he Kampani has no face” (229), suggests the Kampani stands not just for Union Carbide but for a system that rewards those with money and connections, sacrificing the lives of those beneath.
The callousness of the Kampani and the system it represents is demonstrated the day of the hearing, when the people confront the American lawyers, including “the buffalo,” the head lawyer with the snakeskin boots. When a woman asks if he cares that the Kampani’s poison killed people and not insects, the lawyer hands her some money, telling her, “Buy yourself something nice” (307)—a gesture which, along with his jolly statement that he wants to return to his two Italian greyhounds, shows his obliviousness to the people’s inability to buy medicine to cure their diseases. This passage illustrates the contrast between the way the Kampani and the people live. This injustice is reiterated when, mourning the death of Aliya, Animal contemplates how “in the gardens of Jehannum the evil men are eating well and drinking wine […] while the poor go to the dogs” (326).
Zafar tells his friends that in America, the Kampani practiced a drill in which “terrorists”— Khaufpuri protestors—attacked one of its factories. Later, when a mysterious woman releases the factory’s gases into a room where the lawyers are solidifying their deal, the Kampani claims “that it was the victim of terrorism [and that] the culprit should be prosecuted and locked up for years” (361). The Kampani’s perceiving itself as a victim further demonstrates its entitlement and hypocrisy. One of Zafar’s friends encapsulates the people’s perspective when he says, “It’s a strange world […] where a Kampani does acts of terror and then calls us, its victims, terrorists” (283).
The vulnerable people cannot compete with this power; their protests and appeals to the government have no effect. Nisha’s assessment that the fight against the Kampani is “going to go on and on and on” (285) and “will outlast all of us” (285) again reflects that the Kampani represents not just Union Carbide but all institutions that exploit the vulnerable for their own bottom line.
In 2010, seven employees of Union Carbide Indian subsidiary were convicted of criminal negligence and handed what victims’ groups widely saw as light sentences; however, the American CEO escaped punishment.
From the moment Somraj discusses the frog that croaks “the sixth note of the scale” (48) and tells him that “if you listen carefully you can hear the same notes in many other things which you wouldn’t expect” (49), music in Animal’s People represents the coming together of different people and ideas and the notion of a common origin or purpose. Somraj is known in Khaufpur for finding music in bicycles creaking and waterspouts; the Khaufpur website describes how, in the days before “that night,” Somraj would be found outside singing along with storms. Nisha explains that when “the Kampani stole away her father’s breath it also stole his life, because breath is the life of a singer” (33).
When Elli moves across the street, she brings with her a piano, which impresses Animal with its ability to play many notes at once. Both she and Somraj play their instruments at night, each thinking the other is trying to play more loudly. As their relationship begins to blossom, Somraj acknowledges that her world is made of promises and his of music, and asks whether “the two are as far apart as they seem” (204). He tells her there “was a certain beauty in the clashing of our musics” (199), a sentiment he echoes during Muharram as he listens to music in many languages at once: “I don’t distinguish [between sounds]. I try to hear it all together, all at once. When songs clash, as you called it, sometimes out of that comes a new music, something completely fresh” (216). Somraj’s finding unity and celebration in the coming together of different music mirrors the coming together of Somraj and Elli, and therefore the coming together of different worlds. Music is a unifying force. It also shows that even in a world of cruelty, greed, suffering, and inequality, beauty is possible and indeed can be found in the least likely of places. Animal’s decision to reject the surgery that will mend his back suggests a similar message of finding beauty even among devastation.
Somraj’s comment that “[t]he singer’s job is to sing sa, nothing else only sa” (249) but that the note is “bent and twisted by this world and what’s in it, by grief or love or longing” (249), suggests that all people, though they live different lives, participate in a common human experience. Elli’s observation that clashing music comes together “[l]ike with lives” (216) suggests that people, like notes, appear at odds but are, at their core, all the same. That Somraj, a sad, solemn man at the novel’s opening, finds love and happiness through music further illustrates the unifying power of music.
The title Animal’s People suggests that Animal is a voice to represent the poor, suffering people of Khaufpur; he himself is a voice, telling his listener, “Now I am talking to you” (12) and that our job “is to listen” (14) to his story. Animal establishes early on that he hears voices in his head. He claims to hear Chunaram’s thoughts as he fears losing the journalist’s fee for introducing him to Animal, and he says he has seen the souls of passersby as they walked down the street. The voices in his head make crude remarks about Elli, teasing him that she could be the first woman he has sex with. (He tells them to “[s]hut up” and “[f]uck off” [45].) When Elli disentangles the traffic jam in the street, Animal insists he “can read feelings” (71) and therefore knows she’s frightened. Ma Franci takes him to the hospital when he hears voices after the hearing; at the hospital, he hears Khã-in-the-Jar speaking to him of the people’s suffering. Animal can similarly hear the voices of ghosts in the factory: when Animal learns Elli was married to the Kampani’s lawyer, they clamor for him to avenge them. Even Somraj confesses to Animal his theories of music because he “understand[s] that you too have a power of hearing” (49). The night he hears Elli speaking with her ex-husband, Animal hears the voices of the dead in the factory as they clamor for revenge against their murderers.
Though it is never explicitly stated, readers can surmise that Animal’s voices are another effect of “that night”: Zafar suggests Animal is not disabled but “especially abled” (23) and later acknowledges that he is “special” (111) in his ability to read feelings. Ma, too, lapsed into “madness” (37) that night. Now her “brain’s full of warring angels and demons” (8), and she frequently is found ranting in the streets of Khaufpur.
Voices, whether the voices of conscience, of ghosts, or of religious inspiration, tend to represent inner hopes, fears, or beliefs. Animal finds these inner voices sometimes intrusive, such as when he is speaking with Elli; sometimes unhelpful, such as when he consults with them over whether to undergo surgery; sometimes conflicting, such as when he determines whether to confess his knowledge of Elli to Zafar; and sometimes, the purveyors of truth.
Animal first meets Khã-in-the-Jar at the hospital when Ma takes him in for his voices. The Khã-in-the-Jar, a two-headed fetus deformed “that night,” tells Animal it is “stuffed with secrets they’d love to get their hands on” (59) and that Animal “must set me free” (59). Later, in Elli’s office, Khã-in-the-Jar tells Animal he is “the egg of nature, which ignorant and arrogant men have spoiled” (139). He is also “your mother and father, I was you in your childhood, I’ll be you when you’re old” (139). When Animal speaks to the Board of Directors—Khã-in-the-Jar joined by other deformed, preserved fetuses—he laughs at their claim “[t]o undo everything the Kampani does” (237), saying, “you can never change the Kampani” (237), which is “too big and powerful” (237).
Animal is upset by the Khã’s notion that the two of them are alike; however, Khã is not wrong when he explains that Animal—similarly to how the Khã has two heads—has a second, straight identity that rises from where his back becomes bent. Animal, like the Khã, is a physical manifestation of what could have been. They represent the disastrous effects of industry, of corporate power, and arguably of Westernization that dehumanizes and exploits the “other.”
If Animal and the Khã have been physically damaged by the Kampani, the eternally preserved Khã represents the continued exploitation as the Kampani continues to escape punishment. The Khã’s desire to be destroyed is yet one more way Animal’s People portrays the people’s struggle against exploitation.
Fire in Animal’s People often indicates heightened danger, drama, or awareness. The physical demands and the staunch faith required for the coal walk of Muharram seem to help prepare Farouq to endure the hunger strike, which takes place during Nautapa, nine days of extreme heat. Animal notes that during his hunger strike, Zafar’s skin burns to the touch. In the forest, Animal feels the burning of the datura: “The flames climb in my throat but can’t exit, full of nothing I’m nothing full of flames, in my ear the datura sings a song” (342). The Khã demands to be burned, asking Animal to expose it to the fire in Elli’s clinic and finally being engulfed by flames in the burning factory. In the climax of the novel, the burning factory releases the chemicals for the second time. Fire thus is a destructive but purifying force; characters who emerge from fire achieve higher knowledge or experience.