Room 000 written by Kalpish Ratna (the nom de plume of Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed) tells the story of plague in Bombay and how it altered the course of history. Written in vivid prose, it unearths doctors who were at the forefront of the battle, who have been all but forgotten. Here the surgeon-writer duo, with many titles to their name, talk about the perils of ignoring history, the art of sleuthing and the parallels between Ebola and plague. Edited excerpts from the interview:
This book narrates the battle against plague in Bombay. But it also hints at the future and how infectious disease spreads.
IS The next World War is not going to be about Islam or religion. But water. We have a mindset of extractivism, take it out, use it, what you leave behind you don’t give a damn about. That ‘d’ [that society talks about] should not be development but devastation.
KS And devastation brings disease.
IS We bring a medical perspective to this, we are doctors and surgeons. We are trying to tell you, this is not the right way.
KS When you look at disease, we are also looking at what changes one humble ordinary life. Bombay changed completely after the plague. We got our independence because of the plague. That is something that is overlooked.
In the book you mention that when the scientists started studying plague, their vantage point was ignorance. Isn’t that similar to what is happening with Ebola today?
Both It should be.
IS Unless we begin with ignorance, unless we recognise that we don’t know anything, we have no hope. Give us time, we will give you a book on Ebola. We will still be in room 000. With every new disease we will be at the same juncture.
KS The parallels are so devastatingly similar, incident for incident
IS If you change the term ‘plague’ and put ‘Ebola’, you could re-market this book today.
You write how at a time of disease, the protocol is inspection, segregation and quarantine. What are the problems with that system?
IS Whatever you do, if people don’t see beneficial effects, they will not follow it. The British used bleach and perchloride of mercury by the cartload. None of this helped. Doctors knew it wasn’t working. They tried to tell the British. No one was listening. This went on, inspection, segregation. The British knew how to segregate — Muslims, Parsis, etc.
And that is how you create a fear of the outsider…
IS Of course, and that is how you deflect attention away from your irresponsibility.
KS People had only one question; ‘If I go to a hospital, will I survive? If I am going to die, why can’t I die at home, with my own people?’ But they’d turn around and say, but your home is dirty. But those people could say, this is how I live... Many of the quotes here are drawn verbatim.
These are histories that are not celebrated. Like you mention in the book, the plaque to WM Haffkine, who created the first successful vaccine against bubonic plague in room 000 even has a typo in it.
IS The reason behind this book is to tell the story of doctors who were denied their place in history. In the official records they exist. But they are not celebrated.
Why aren’t they celebrated?
KS Because they were Indian.
IS You have a medical assistant, who is the hardworking Indian doctor. Who is actually doing everything. His pay is 1/10th of the sahib. The plague occurred at a time, when these discrepancies could no longer be borne. In 1896, germ theory of disease was new. Doctors were just beginning to look at the fact that there were actual causative microscopic organisms. Pathology was a new science, bacteriology was a new science. When a disease on an epidemic scale broke out, that place became ground zero for all the doctors in the world. People flocked here from Paris, Vienna, etc to examine it. It was good it was happening to someone else, so that tomorrow someone should not die in Paris or Germany.
KS We were sub-human to the Europeans, but is there any reason why we should remain sub-human to ourselves now? There is a lot of anger in this book. Not our anger.
IS It could be the anger of the common man today.
This book is essentially about historic sleuthing. As physicians and surgeons how do you approach sleuthing?
IS The art of medicine and the craft of medicine and surgery is the art of sleuthing. Every patient that comes to us, we are detectives of a kind. The criminal we are seeking is what causes the disease. And unlike the detectives of fiction and police procedure who do not cure people who come to them, our attempt is to rid them of the crime, and make them stay alive. It is our interest in writing that predates us becoming surgeons. It is just logical that we now go in the opposite direction.
How do you move from the ‘I’ to ‘us’ in your writing?
KS We do everything together. From the epiphany onward. The thought is not complete in one person, without being completed by the other. Our strongest suit is dissent. The more we disagree, the more we agree. It is dangerous on days when we agree, we know something disastrous is going to happen soon! Any process that works we don’t question it too closely. We are just grateful it works.
You have written many books for children before. Is there another one in the offing?
IS We still write for children, but we have consciously decided not to publish. We are not happy with how publishing for children is going in the country. We both feel that writing for children is the best writing that we do.
KS You cannot publish a book for children with no space for a child in it. You cannot talk down to them, certainly.
When life is being incredibly harsh, we always write something for children. It becomes better that way.