On August 15, more than a century ago, the city's first plague
victim died. The epidemic that killed thousands and sent worried folks to temples and churches is also the reason why Bengaluru got telephone lines & well-planned layoutsEvery evening, V Parmesh rushes back home to shed his PSU super visor uniform to wrap a clean panchakacham and turn into a pujari. He has been doing this double shift ever since he took over the family temple, the cheery blue Shri Plague Maheshwari temple, jammed between an old house and a high-rise on the narrow Bowee Street in Ulsoor.
The temple has been in the family for more than three generations. But Parmesh isn't sure what `plague' is, the strange appellation given to goddess Mariamma, an all-powerful south Indian deity famed for curing cholera and chicken pox. At some point she also `cured' plague that ravaged Bengaluru in the 19th century. “There was plague during my great grandmother's time around 100 years ago. There was no medicine; when vomiting and diarrhoea started you had lemon and vibhuti (sacred ash) from the temple,” says Parmesh.
It is a similar narrative at other places of worship linked to plague, whether it is St Mary's Basilica or Dandu Mariamma temple in Shivajinagar. “Locals talk about curing `plakku' with turmeric, lemon and kumkum from the temple. But no one knows what the disease is about,” says Perumal Venkatesan, a photographer who chronicled some of these temples.
Plague is no urban myth. On another August 15 in 1898, a poor butler died of plague in Bengaluru, the first of the 3,000 plus deaths that year. The last human case of plague in India was from Kolar in 1966 but suspected outbreaks have occurred at Attibele on the city's outskirts in the 1980s. “We are very close to Kolar, Attibele and Hosur, which is part of the tri-junction of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where it is present. The possiblity of transmission is real as it is overrun by rodents and fleas,” says Shyamal Biswas, former joint director and head of the Plague Surveillance Unit of the National Centre for Disease Control, the only such centre for plague study in the country.
Travelling germsIn the 19th century, it was the Railways that brought the deadly bubonic plague to Bengaluru. The first patient, the butler of a railway official, succumbed to fever and chills at Goods Shed area in the pete. All courtesy the fleas hosting the Y pestis bacteria that were probably brought in by the Southern Maratha railways from plague afflicted Bombay Presidency. The city's rodents carried the fleas to other parts soon. By the time its run ended, there were 4,992 cases and 4,472 deaths in the district.
The number could have been higher as people started fleeing in panic before the British government could act, notes the Bangalore District Gazetteer. “In the beginning there were 23 cases confined to the proximity of Goods Shed Road and its neighbourhood.” The numbers soon rose and when plague attacked scavengers, the conservancy establishment struck work. “The terror caused by dead bodies being found thrown into dustbins and manure heaps resulted in the manure cart contractors and their men refusing to remove the sweepings. A good portion of the town was deserted, trade was paralysed, and necessaries of life were sold at famine rates,”````` says the Gazetteer.
Orders to live in segregation by the government were resisted. Close to 30,000 residents left the pete in 1898, deserting sick family at home, and taking the infection with them to other parts of Karnataka.
Tragedy turned blessing?The government had to act and somehow inoculate the population and segregate the infected. And this is where it hastened the modernisation of Bengaluru, just like the Great London Fire of 1656 transformed the English city.
A plague commission set up outposts, quarantine camps and inspection stations to monitor travellers and observe the unwell. The city got a separate health officer and a new hospital Victoria. Sanitation as a preventive measure too came to the fore. Drains were repaired for Rs 1 lakh while old, abandoned buildings were demolished. “Regulations were issued for building new houses with proper facilities of sanitation and provision for ventilation. Together with disinfecting over 8,400 houses in the city, steps were taken to provide ventilation by opening additional windows,” notes the Gazetteer. Rodent control measures included payment of six annas for a dozen bandicoots, three annas for a dozen rats and two annas for a dozen mice killed.
Telephone to mal-gudi“Every area had a health officer and a telegraph line to his office. The calamity really changed the city,” says writer and history buff Poornima Dasharathi. Another first was the laying and extensive usage of telephone lines to co-ordinate anti-plague operations. The next year, these lines were used to provide connections to 50 offices in the city and eventually to residences.
Once the situation came under control, the government started looking for housing for the displaced. It acquired 440 acres to set up Basavanagudi and 291 acres to create Malleswaram. These well-planned layouts had conservancy roads, drainage and other amenities to keep away congestion, filth and infections.
“This area has a grid planning with wide tree-lined roads emanating from the centre,” says architect and Basavangudi resident Mansoor Ali. The old conservancy lanes that had bullock carts to take away night soil are still serviceable. “All sewage and utility lines go through them. Bescom needn't dig up main roads to repair,” says Ali. So, when there is severe waterlogging in neighbouring Jayanagar, Basavanagudi remains more or less unaffected. This is despite the fact that many of the conservancy lanes have been encroached upon.
Architect Naresh Narasimhan says the government should copy this 100-year-old `simple' design for all upcoming layouts. “In the 19th century, the government first set up the infrastructure and then created the layout. In Kempe Gowda and Shivarama Karantha layouts it is the other way around. No wonder the new layouts don't become neighbourhoods but places for speculators to buy land,” he says.
Re-learn lessonsSome of these lessons are worth revisiting to avoid a possible recurrence of epidemics. Shyamal Biswas says he has written to health authorities countless times to restart rodent control measures. “We now have leptospirosis, which is spread by rodents, in the city. All it would take is a severe ecological imbalance like the Latur earthquake, which caused rodent migration to Beed in 1994 and caused plague,” says Biswas, who was part of the team that helped control the last, major human outbreaks in India Beed in Maharashtra, and Surat in Gujarat. Epidemics are cyclical. After the 1898 attack, Bengaluru had outbreaks in 1902, 1903 and 1904. This abated only after the widespread spraying of DDT under the National Malaria Control programme. But stories of cases abound, the latest from Uttarakhand in 2004 apart from incidences in the peninsular tri-junction.
At the Ulsoor temple, Parmesh seems unaware of the history but he doesn't want to change the strange name of the temple either. These days devotees come to cure modern ills career and family problems. “I feel if I change the name, I will face trouble. Even if `vanthi-pethi' (vomiting and diarrhoea are the only plague symptoms he knows) comes again, one can get help here. That is the belief,” he says.
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