It may have been almost 20 years ago, but memories of the December night when killer gas swept through Bhopal's working-class neighbourhoods are still vivid for Champa Devi Shukla.
'We were sleeping when we heard shouts that there had been a gas leak and that we should run for our lives,' she says. As soon as the family stepped outside, their eyes began to run and they started to cough. Severe chest pains made it difficult to breathe.
The dense gas moved slowly and stayed close to the ground, and, despite the winter chill, Mrs Shukla remembers feeling very hot. Along with thousands of others, the family ran towards the bus station hoping to flee the city. But her husband fell and was badly injured, and their two daughters could go no further, overcome by the deadly methyl isocyanate pouring from a storage tank at a plant run by the Indian arm of US chemical giant Union Carbide.
Mrs Shukla's three sons ran on, but soon lost consciousness and were carried out of the city. After three days they returned, but not before their mother had spent hours touring local hospitals. 'There were thousands of dead bodies on the ground,' she says. 'People were screaming in pain while others were silent. We couldn't tell if they were dead or alive.'
Even though they survived the first day of the disaster, the leak was to have a devastating impact on Mrs Shukla's family. Her husband developed bladder problems, and was bedridden with breathlessness and chest pains for long periods. He died in 1997.
A son committed suicide in 1992, depressed as his gas-induced poor health meant he could not work. A daughter had a paralysis attack six months after the leak and has been weak ever since.