QUEEN'S ROAD: Recently, authors Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan — who write together as Kalpish Ratna — were in town to oversee the launch of their latest novel at Atta Galatta. ROOM 000 is a book about death, disease and retribution set in the Bombay of 1896. The narrative is rife with intrigue and richly textured with the memory of a time that is long gone but still persists in forgotten corners.
Ishrat is a paediatric and general surgeon, while Kalpana is a paediatric surgeon. Their novel, The Quarantine Papers, was shortlisted for the 2010 Crossword Award and set the tone of the kind of books they like to write. Books laced with medical references, human stories, historical insights and nostalgia. Their last book, Once Upon A Hill, explored the lore around Andheri’s Gilbert Hill, a spectacular, black basalt rock. The latest book insightfully follows the contagion unleashed by the Bombay Plague, a web created by serial killings and the scientific and investigative search for answers.
Ishrat, also a photographer, brings to the story the immediacy of a moment frozen in time and as his 2011 exhibition The Persistence of Memory showed, the idea of what remains of the past in the present, intrigues him.
Kalpana won the 2009 Crossword Fiction Award for Venus Crossing and is a prolific writer, effortlessly combining genres.
In an email interview, the two share how they work together seamlessly and what informs their style of narration.
Please recall the alchemy that brought you together...
Alchemy? No, it was serendipity that brought us together. It has been alchemy thereafter. We were postgraduates in surgery at Grant Medical College when we first met. We tell stories together because we think and speak in a singular voice. This alchemy is a gift and what is that plea of the ancients? Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Medicine, history and intrigue...what triggers this process? Describe the research that went into this book
Exquisite, painstaking, bloody-minded, persistent and laborious. Four years of such research has been annealed into the narratives of ROOM 000. This research took us from Bombay to Agra to Delhi to Hardwar to London to Jerusalem to New York.
We are surgeons. Medicine is our art, craft and sustenance. The silver lining is that medicine comes with an eclectic history and intrigue infests it.
Does the book bring together your passion for persistent memory?
Yes. Bombay, our city, is our muse. Not just the forgotten chapters of our city’s life, it is the heroes, unsung and unspoken of, that drive our passion. Our attempt is to amend the iniquities that written history has wrought over these people who should be celebrated, venerated and sung about. We all know Waldemar Haffkine. There is an institute named after him. Yersinia pestis, the name given to the plague bacillus, honors Alexandre Yersin. But have you heard of Dr Accacio Viegas? He diagnosed the first case of bubonic plague in Bombay city. Do you know Dr Nusserwanji Surveyor? He isolated the plague bacillus from samples he obtained from
Dr Viegas’ index case. What of Dr Nusserwanji Choksey, perhaps the most erudite authority on plague the world has ever known?
He single-handedly saw, treated, and documented more than 4,000 cases of plague. These are just the doctors. What of the nurses, the patients, the families of sufferers, the rich, the poor, the prostitutes, the pimps, the sadhus, the nuns? What of the city itself? How did it alter in the face of this epidemic? ROOM 000 is not just these stories, it is a social history of Bombay in the time of the plague.
When you see Mumbai today, are there aspects of Bombay that you miss?
We loathe the dictum that seems to be the motto of the day. “We shall make Bombay like Singapore!” Why? If I want Singapore I’ll take a trip there, damn it! Let Bombay remain Bombay! There is no other city like it on the planet.
Tell us about your Bengaluru visit..
We liked your new Kempegowda Airport. We loved the old world charm of Atta Galatta where we introduced ROOM 000 to Bengaluru. Specially, we loved the majestic trees that adorn your city...the umbrageous rain trees, the canopies of purple-flowering jacaranda, flame of the forest, yellow and pink tabebuia, cassia, silver oak, gulmohur. We were lucky to be here for Ugadi, spring was in the air and it was, verily, a city of gardens.
Tell us how photography segues into the storytelling process.
Ishrat’s photographs, are an essential part of the Kalpish Ratna oeuvre. They drive, enhance and illumine the storytelling engine.
How do you look back at your collective and individual growth as authors.
Let me answer that with a line from Alice. ‘No, no, the adventures first,’ said the Gryphon. ‘Explanations take such a long time.’
What does writing mean to you?
Writing to us is need and instinct. Its craft, like surgery, is accomplished with pure discipline.