Dear Reader,
Recently, my thoughts have been constantly turning plaguewards. Perhaps it is the sign of an oncoming bout of depression, perhaps it is triggered by events happening around us—for instance, a certain celebrity wedding that has been hitting the senses in miasmic waves over the past few months. And then there is the web series, Decameron, loosely based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s classic of the same name, that comes to Netflix soon. Bocaccio’s Decameron is set in 14th century Florence at a time when the bubonic plaque was wreaking havoc, with people and animals dropping dead like flies on the streets. Written more than 600 years ago, the Decameron seems startlingly contemporary, not the least because the scenes of plague it describes so graphically are now familiar to us from our recent experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Bocaccio’s book, the plague lays bare social, moral and psychological abysses. The poor die unattended in filthy hutments while the rich strut about wearing flowers to ward off the stench of death. The plague generates paranoia on the one hand and unfettered merrymaking on the other—with the future reduced to a blur, survivors give themselves over to pleasures of the flesh in the little time that is left. Parents abandon their ailing children, friends run away, and the idea of love and kindness, which guides life in peaceful times, goes poof. So, the question at the heart of Decameron is: when the social fabric is rent and the rules of community willy-nilly fall apart, what is left that still makes us human? We are yet to find the definitive answer to this existential query.
My continued interest took me to the book, Merits of the Plague, by Ma Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, translated and introduced by Joel Blecher. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani was a scholar of 14th century Egypt who lived through the bubonic plague, losing three of his children to it. Burdened with loss, he reflects on the origins of plagues—from Prophet Muhammad’s time to his own—pondering how such catastrophes can happen in accordance with God’s will. It results in a crisis of faith, which he tries to restore by contemplating the merits of the plague—he shows how such periods of acute distress also bring out the best in people, as they go out of themselves to help others. Al-Asqalani rallies the power of history, folklore, medical science, poetry, and theology in the defence of his thesis, which ends with a fervent affirmation of hope amidst the darkness.
In contrast, Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, also about the plague, dashes all hope in human goodness. He presents a situation quite similar to the one painted by Boccaccio: the super-rich blithely party within the safe confines of a walled abbey even as common people outside drop dead, overcome by “sharp pains”, “sudden dizziness”, and “profuse bleeding at the pores”. The owner of the abbey, Prince Prospero, and his privileged set think they can hoodwink fate by barricading themselves . But death, in the form of a tall, masked, robed figure, inevitably enters the castle, killing everyone. If there is any positive takeaway from the story, it is the reminder that everybody is equal in the kingdom of death.
Author Anil Menon asked some pointed existential questions in his review of Julia Hauser and Sarnath Banerjee’s book on the plague, The Moral Contagion. He wondered how, in times of devastation, we still manage to live on, procreate, write poetry, invent, when the likelier response would be to give it all up and succumb to despair. Interestingly, both Bocaccio and al-Asqalani point to literature as consolation (the protagonists of Decameron tell stories to keep their minds off the terrible reality). Perhaps we trundle on because we know from books that others before us have recovered from journeying through the grey vale of despair. In that sense, all books, not just religious ones, give us the strength to survive. A writer, with her insight into life, is also a secular prophet who can foresee the future.
We were reminded of the power of prophesy in writing when the lockdown started during the pandemic, and the empty streets started resembling the post-apocalyptic cities of science fiction books. The recent heatwave brought back that feeling of dread. Indeed, New Delhi seems to have become a dystopic city, permanently ravaged by heatwaves in summer, floods in monsoon, and toxic smoke-filled air in winter. Maybe 50 years from now the city as we know it will cease to exist.
Looking at Delhi today, it is already hard to imagine a city through which the Yamuna once flowed unclogged, which had beautiful promenades, clean bazaars, and stylish buildings. That Delhi lives only in history and literature. The latest historical novel painting a vivid portrait of 19th century Delhi is Rana Safvi’s A Firestorm in Paradise: A Novel on the 1857 Uprising, which is reviewed with warmth by Madhulika Liddle here. Another remarkable novel set around the revolt of 1857 is Raza Mir’s Murder at the Mushaira, which features a wise but bumbling Mirza Ghalib as detective.
Meanwhile, the To-Be-Read pile of detective novels on my bedside is getting higher by the day. I plan to reduce it this weekend. Bye for now, as I attack the pile.
Until then,
Anusua Mukherjee
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