Spotlight
I gaze at an unusual South Asia map: it is a ragged dull-yellow chart from 1921 that estimates the number of “insanes” on the sub-continent. This map has five translucent dots, like crystal balls, which on touch takes me to a different world, a different time. The ball near Kolkata transports me to the 1800s, to a hand-coloured print of the city’s mental hospital.
Here I learn about Eliza Moirs, 44, an inmate here since February 1860. She has blue eyes and dark-brown hair, but no one knows where she was born, or who she was born to. In the asylum, she was prone to occasional bouts of violence and was “a source of annoyance to the other patients”.
