The City and Ammas Part-1

1898 to 1930

THE Pandemic Travels
SHIP| TRAIN| FLIGHT

Left: Clare Arni, Covid-19, Bangalore, 26. 02. 2021

 Right: Covid-19, Bangalore, 03. 04. 2020 image source - Social media circulation (unknown photographer)

While the first case of Covid in Bangalore is said to have been brought by a software engineer who returned from the US by flight, oral history suggests that the Great plague too travelled by train through a railway employee who landed first in the cantonment region of Bangalore.

Trains were disinfected thoroughly before further journey. An excerpt from a newspaper about a normal disinfection process for train passengers suspected of infection states that “The usual procedure is to strip the passenger, and to give him a cloth to wrap round his loins. His clothes and luggage are then disinfected by steam, a thorough and satisfactory method. There are usually articles in his baggage that would not stand this disinfection, so are exposed to the sun for an hour or so. The passenger himself is conducted to a bathing-shed, and a gallon or so of corrosive sublimate (1-10,000) is poured over him as he squats on the ground, leaving much of his body untouched; and the momentary contact of the disinfecting fluid can do little if anything to the parts of the body it does succeed in reaching. The passenger then receives back his clothes, and he is considered disinfected”.

In a paper released by Epidemiological Society of London, J Spencer,

the then Medical officer in Jolarpet, has explained in detail the process

of passengers’ inspection at Jolarpet

 

Gippsland Times, 1901,
Pictures for representation purposes only,

https://bengalurureview.com/protectors-pestilence-and-poxes-journeying-through-the-plague-temples-of-bengaluru

In Bangalore, passengers were personally escorted by the police to their houses and were then observed for ten days by the plague authorities while the infected were in quarantine. While the current requirement for the covid quarantine is 14 days, the idea of isolating the infected person back in the 14th century lasted upto 40 days.

References to isolating people with leprosy can be found in the Bible, and hospitals called lazarettos, which were intentionally constructed outside the city center, existed by the first half of the 14th century in Venice.

The principal Lazarettos in Europe Naples- Quarantine station 'Offizia della Sanita'.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_account_of_the_principal_Lazarettos_in_Europe

Image is for representation purposes only. Courtesy: internet

A view of the city of Malta, on the side of the Lazaretto or pest-house,
where ships perform quarantine, by Joseph Goupy, around 1740-1760.
Cartographic Items Maps K.Top.84.102.g
https://www.theinsightnewsonline.com/the-432-year-old-manual-on-social-distancing/

Image is for representation purposes only. Courtesy: internet, 

 

The Persian scholar of medicine, Ibn Sina (980-1037) who first came up with the method of quarantine to prevent the spread of diseases. He suspected that some diseases were spread by microorganisms; so to prevent human-to-human contamination, he suggested isolating people for 40 days. He called this method al-Arba’iniya (“the forty”).

In the mid-14th century Europe, the bubonic plague, infamously known as the Black Death, was ripping through the continent. Officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a law establishing trentino, or a 30-day period of isolation for ships arriving from plague-affected areas. No one from Ragusa was allowed to visit those ships under trentino, and if someone broke the law, they too would be isolated for the mandatory 30 days. Within a century, cities extended the isolation period from 30 to 40 days, and the term changed from trentinoto quarantino—the root of the English word quarantine that we use today.

 
A quarantine guard ship, Rhin, 1830, near Sheerness (Standgate Creek) -
one of the earliest and longest-used forms of defence against sea-borne disease.
Image is for representation purposes only. Courtesy: internet,
UK national Maritime museum, Unknown author.

No one knows for certain why the isolation period was extended to 40 days, but scholars suggest that perhaps 30 days wasn’t enough to burn out the disease. There is also a lot of cultural meaning packed into the number 40, linked to the belief that every religion has a fasting period of 40 days for certain body and mind cleansing which is like sanitization.

In the Indian context, the idea of quarantine is visible in the practice of isolating menstruating women.. While there were scientific reasons for the same, people did not follow or believe the reasons. So, a religious connotation was put to it to instill a sense of fear in the common man. Later it transformed as a practice of myths and helped discipline the people due to the fear of god but in due course the scientific technique became a ritual with no context.

 

 

Photo credit: Archana Hande, Shivajinagar, 2020

Similarly, Plague Amma, Nale ba, Dhristi Gombe, Amma kalu, are all related to the city of Bangalore and its myths. During the Great plague of 1898 these iconic city myths became more important in the hope of postponing the disaster. After almost a century, during these times of covid, we can catch a glimpse of the same practices revisiting us. While the new “Covid Amma Temple” is yet to be seen in the city, the installation is not far away. Afterall, the ammas do rule the city.

In the next section we talk about the religious myths and rumors around the Great Plague, how much they got slowly distorted and transformed into rituals because of the unknown fear which has no scientific context today.