Uncertain life and sure death: medicine and mahamaari in maritime Mumbai

Bombay’s fortunes, through sickness and health, have been shaped by the sea. Ships that came to plunder, conquer and trade also brought beliefs, cultures and plagues. The plague of arrival, peculiar to European maritime adventures, was scurvy. The plague of displacement, specific to the shifts of population from the slave trade, was the bloody flux. The plague of genocide and extinction of two continents, was smallpox. The pilgrims’ plague was cholera. The plague of history was Yersinia pestis, plague in all its vagaries. Carrack and carvel, galleon and grab, Indiaman, clipper, steamship and shooner…….For five centuries ships have been auguries of uncertain life and sure death, their arrivals and departures a chronicle of plagues in the islands we now call Mumbai. Sailors and passengers, cargo and crew, were captives in a complex milieu that fostered these plague. They were in thrall to the ship, and the ship moved in thrall to the elements. Plague came about when we disturb the balance of nature. The ocean, the highway of exploration and conveyor – belt for plunder, is the element that controls the lands. What were these plagues? Who were the victims, and who the physicians treating them? Kalpish Ratna traces these plagues through Bombay’s real laboratory of disease. Its places and peoples, and discloses answers that tomorrow cannot afford to ignore. Kalpish Ratna also explores the city like a palimpsest, revealing the troubled story of medicine and mahamaari in maritime Mumbai.