A Pandemic and a Literary Account

Just like today, the world was gripped by a deadly pandemic at least a century earlier. The 1918 influenza pandemic spread all across the globe leaving no major inhabited place untouched. Quaranties proved useless almost everywhere. According to various estimates, 20 to 50 million people died all across the world. The pandemic, caused by the virus of H1N1 family, spread in three distinct waves which prolonged to more than a year. The first "spring" wave began in March 1918 and diffused to Europe, Africa, India, China and Australia in April and July. The second and the most deadly known as the "fall" wave began in late August and fanned out quickly from France. Many places experienced a third, but "less well-defined wave" in the winter of 1918 and spring of 1919. The disease seriously jeopardised the social and demographic pattern of the world.

Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala' was a great Hindi poet, essayist, novelist and pioneer of Chhayawad poetry. He is remembered for his great experiments with different genres and themes. Nirala provided a vivid account of this deadly pandemic in the Indian countryside. But more on that later.

The Global Spread of the Virus 

According to Patterson and Pyle, the earliest case of the virus was reported from an army recruitment camp for World War I in Kansas, USA where the epidemic began on March 5. The flu diffused to war-torn Europe as the American troopships reached France by early April. They point out that since Spain did not censor news and epidemic was widely publicized there, it led to the coinage of the misleading term Spanish Flu. Influenza engulfed the whole of Europe by June-end. 

Tram conductor in Seattle not allowing passengers aboard without a mask, during the Influenza  Flu Pandemic in 1918

Africa was infected in May. Troops returning to Indian subcontinent carried the virus the docks of Bombay in May. Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia were infected by June. The spring wave waned in July and August. But, on the other hand, a new and more deadly second wave began in western France in Early August. The majority of deaths were of young adults.

The Pandemic and India

India was the focal point of this Influenza spread and loss of life. The estimates of the data regarding the mortality rates in India are wide-ranging. It differs from 6 million to 30 million. The official records of the British Indian government suggest a total toll of 6 million, which is definitely an undercount. Davis calculated the death toll to be 17.21 million. 

Spanish flu weekly trends in 3 Indian regions in 1918. 

(Source: Siddharth Chandra and Eva Kassens-Noor/BMC Infectious Diseases, 2014)

In the 19th century, the influenza pandemic broke out in the years 1803, 1833, 1837, 1840 and 1890. Colonel Norman White, Sanitary Commissioner to the Government of India diagnosed influenza as similar to that of 1890. But the 1918 influenza epidemic was more lethal in terms of mortality. According to a report by the Sanitary Commissioner of Punjab, the symptoms of the disease were: fever, slow pulse rate, ache in ache body, physical and mental depression and respiratory distress and inflammation in the air passage. The people exposed to the disease were normally dead in three days.

The diffusion of the disease was mainly aided by the enhanced pace and volume of the human movement. The soldiers returning to their villages from the military campaigns, the trade and commerce through ships and inland movement through railroad and postal services helped the virus to fan out in the entire Indian subcontinent. However, in most places, the first case was recorded after the movement of soldiers. 

(Courtesy: R. Bala)

In India, the largest number of deaths was reported in the United Provinces, which also had the largest population in British ruled India. According to an official estimate, more than one million people died in this province only. K. Davis, however, has shown that this data is full of discrepancies. The province experienced a death rate of 89.07 deaths per thousand population. Central Provinces and Berar lost 5.6 per cent of the population due to influenza deaths. Delhi was right behind where the 5.5 per cent population was wiped out. Bombay, Punjab and North-West Frontier Province also experienced high mortality rates. The majority of the people who died were in the prime of their life. 

A Literary Account of the Pandemic

A Life Misspent provides an account of Suryakant Tripathi Nirala's life. It also happens to provide an account of his friendship with Kulli Bhaat. It also provides a moving account of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Nirala was married to Manohara Devi from a small town named Dalmau in Rae Bareli district of United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). She was the one who motivated him to learn and write in Khari Boli. It was in Dalmau where he met an ordinary man but a great soul Kulli Bhaat. It was also here where he was exposed to the biggest jolt of his life.

A rare image of  Suryakant Tripahi 'Nirala'

The account from Sutti Khanna's translation goes like this: "There was a violent outbreak of influenza about this time...I received a telegram: 'Your wife is gravely ill. Come immediately.' I was twenty-two...The newspapers had informed us about the ravages of the epidemic. I travelled to the riverbank in Dalmau and waited. The Ganga was swollen with dead bodies. At my in-laws' house, I learned that my wife had passed away. My cousin had come over my ancestral village to help with wife's illness, but he had taken ill himself and returned home. I left for our ancestral village the very next day. As I was walking towards my house, I saw my cousin's corpse being carried to the cremation site."

The influenza infection did not spare his family yet. He further wrote: "My uncle was the head of the family. He, too, contracted influenza...Words cannot describe how pitiful the scene was, how helpless, how tender...Sister-in-law passed away on the third day of my cousin's death. The nursing child was also sick. I slept that night holding her. She, too, passed away in the morning. I buried her in the riverbank. Then Uncle died. One more corpse to cart to the Ganga. Sister-in-law's three sons contracted fever. Somehow, I was able to nurse them back to health. My family disappeared in the blink of an eye. All our sharecroppers and labourers died, the four who worked for my cousin and the two who worked for me."               

This excerpt brings up the horrifying situation that gripped United Provinces and the whole of India at that time in the absence of the basic health care facilities and the presence of an unsympathetic and exploitative colonial regime. "I would go sit on a mound by the Ganga and watch and watch the file of corpses brought to the river", Nirala further added. 

To conclude, the world had never seen such a cataclysmic disease before. First, no other disease in the past had spread with such rapidness in the entire world. Second, no other disease had spread to such geographical expanse with hardly any pocket of the world left untouched. And lastly, influenza affected far more number of people than any other disease.

(Excerpts from Suryakant Tripathi Nirala's A Life Misspent translated by Sutti Khanna)

Follow the author on Twitter: @aditya_singh099