Muslim ghettoes and health as adaptability

The current issue of the medical magazine the Lancet carries a lead article on what is health according to life today. It says health is not “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being” nor is it “merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Health is the ability to adapt to one’s environment. There is a profound truth in this definition which the magazine has taken from the French scientist Georges Canguilhem.
Space is an important determinant of health today. But it is no mere matter of the environmental concern. Space as an inanimate thing has a bearing on health. Muslim ghettoes around cities like Mumbai or Malegaon and everywhere else present an interesting picture of study in the health science.
Madanpura or Sankli Street in the centre of Mumbai are so congested and crowded with people and shops and traffic that you might wonder how any animal could survive in such a place. But look closely and you would have to be cautious to negotiate the scanty footpath if it is still there because the portly goat is occupying its own ‘reserve’ of public space meant for the humans. It is secured by a chain connected to either a shop or a dooryard or a corner post. The goats are invariably there cluttering the footpath along with the two or four wheelers and the usual domestic or shop adjuncts like a roll of bed tucked in between two sections of rooms or shops or cooking pots of the footpath dwellers. There might be the tawdry plastic mat spread with urchins sleeping or playing. If you enter a rooming house of four stories your host may not be available to welcome you but the hefty goat or the domestic cat will always be there. In case you turn up at night there would be the ubiquitous unwieldy rodents scampering in their sloth and not bothering to leave you space to walk in. It is their time to feed. Old or young resident you are not allowed to stroll around if you are still in the habit of taking a turn round the corner for a post dinner brief walk.
Biological diversity is there, yes, but space, no, what else is there then. The pigeons and crows who cannot afford space on the roads and footpath or dooryard are also present in their large numbers to claim that biological diversity does exist in Mumbai. The sparrows have disappeared; they are extinct, because they could not compete with the crows and pigeons. Moreover they were a little choosy about their food habits, unlike the omnivorous fellow birds. But the humans present a different picture. Their life style includes use of polythene bags for carrying food and throwing the left over and dirt all around. Until the corporation health workers come late in the morning the rodents turn the polythene bags in whichever way they like to root for the edible stuff within. Thus the spaces immediately adjacent to ground floor rooms are unsafe for walk or play. The space beyond this is fully covered with the vehicles of the people who live within the rooms or have shops there. If there is some space still left because yours is a blind alley the children and like them their elders play whatever game they can manage with a bat and a ball. The games produce more loud noise than any agile movement of the legs and arms.
The dust and dirt makes the vehicle so ugly a sight by morning that it has created a new profession. That is the factotum with a pail and a mop moving slowly in the morning washing the vehicles so that it is fit for you to sit and ride again. Your movement is further restricted by these workers in their diurnal visit to these areas.
If all the holy men of ancient India and the prophets of the Middle East were to visit these areas they would be dismayed by their followers taking their noble profession of shepherding to a logical conclusion. They would be amazed by the goats and sheep stuck in the third floor of buildings and in some cases confined to wooden platforms where their legs fall out of the boards and nails poking their hide and making sleep so difficult.
No doubt their flocks have survived because they have adapted to their new surroundings. But like their live stock they too are immobile, they cannot run or jump and are a sight to see. They carry more fat and flesh and seem to have forgotten fasting and parsimonious food habits and frugality of the earlier daily life of the desert or the Himalayas.
Among the live stocks are still the cocks and hens who not only navigate the collected pools of water around the streets but the balconies and roofs of protruding shops where the tenants of upper stories have thrown whatever they could manage in the nick of time.
Even the prophets and holy men would feel unwelcome in the one room living quarters of their followers. It would be too daunting to look up and see the too much constricting lofts where instead of dead stocks dumped are burrowing children and even young couples, hibernating according to whichever time and shift of work they have to go through.
Thus adaptability is health. But the Rip-Van-winkle sleep of the visitors would be nightmare what with diabetic condition, blood pressure, asthma, and so on of the humans and the animals alike. Even Canguilhem would have a wry smile on his face to see how health here in Madanpura is not defined by the doctors but by the person according to his or her functional needs in life!