The Calcutta Chromosome

Calcutta: August 1995. Murugan and Urmila are walking down Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road, when Urmila catches a whiff of the irresistible smell of fish cutlets coming from Dilkhusha Cabin. Urmila propels Murugan into the eatery and orders for both of them. She then asks Murugan who this Lutchman is.

Murugan explains that Lutchman was the guy who offered himself as a guinea pig to Ronald Ross in May of 1895 for his malaria research. Lutchman remained with Ross for the next three years as his assistant, making sure that he stayed on the right path. Urmila wonders how Lutchman would know where to lead Ross. Murugan replies that he had seen a letter written by Elijah Farley, an American missionary doctor, who earlier had been doing medical research back in the US. Farley had visited Cunningham’s lab, where he’d noticed how it was the poor and uneducated assistants that Cunningham found at Sealdah station who seem to know more about malaria than Cunningham could ever have taught them. 

Urmila gasps, “You mean like Mangal-bibi—like the name the girl said?” (245). Urmila then cries out. Murugan suggests they were working on a prototype. While Murugan states that not much more is known about her, it’s clear she was likely a sort of self-taught genius, who could think outside the box.