park street cemetery

a view of the cemetery

resting place of "hindoo stuart", famed brit gone native

we found our way into the cemetery from some ghetto side entrance, where men and crows were sorting thru dumptrucks full of garbage. some of it overflowing onto the street that we were trying to negotiate ourselves across. from that, the stickiness and the stink, coming into the cemetary was like stepping into another universe. a universe of deep quiet, old monuments surrounded by grass and trees, that lush bengal greenery that in all the dust and dirt you sometimes forget is there. and set amid it, headstones bearing poetic epitaphs, grand mausoleums, impressive obelisks. some still standing, some slowly falling apart like old greek temples. definitely an unexpected retreat from park street and all its blaring commercialism that lay just on the other side of the wall which enclosed these graves, its mcdonalds and its kfcs and its music worlds. a hidden world of old stones and hidden paths long overgrown by grass, imposing and even majestic commemorations to the early english of kolkata. one of those lasting marks of colonial extravagance. but striking within this extravagance to note the ages of the dead. so many under the age of 25, especially women, people who came and within only a few years died, victims of an unfriendly climate. so out of keeping with the grandeur of their final resting places. all the wives of the officers—you walk down the row reading about beloved elizabeth dead at 21, dearest rose dead at 23, sweetest mary dead at 22. the men with slightly higher ages at death, tho one suspects that that is only because they came to calcutta at an older age. amid all the intense green and quiet, monuments to the hopelessness of early british colonial life, in that marshy swampy place called calcutta. i can only imagine how in a time when life was so fickle, so easily stolen away, it became so important to remember the dead, enshrine them in these grand constructions, how this somehow must have felt reassuring to a community so unsure of itself.

rabindra sarobar, south kolkata

the lake hides behind walls, buildings, busy streets, and even once inside the compound it hides behind crowds of folk out for their morning walks, breathing exercises, laughing yoga clubs. here you find an old man with eyes and mouth covered, breathing with true concentration; there, a circle of men swinging their arms behind their backs and clapping in almost-perfect unison; yonder, two young lovers out early, holding hands on the lake’s edge under the early morning shade of a dusty tree. a blooming tree drops its fragrant blossoms onto the concrete as well as a large pile of trash—a beauty wasted. piles of unknown organic waste scattered here and there on the footpath, pecked at by crows. sleeping dogs. strange dark growths in the pond can be seen, there, under the lilypads. every so often there is an unidentifiable bird, along with the crows. it is beautiful, a pale grey with a long beak for the fishes and long elegant legs. a man runs by you panting. you glance into the lake, there are insects skating on the surface. you cannot spot the fish, but you know they are there hiding somewhere... maybe under the strange dark growths. the rowing club in their incredible modern-age contraptions (can these even really be called boats anymore??) seem to glide over the water. people turn to stare at the newly-formed female rowing team, but lose interest after a while. they are all absorbed in their little exercises, regimes, pelvis-rolling sessions. the one out of place, with no set regimen, i leave wishing that the beauty that seems so very much on the verge in this place, reaching out from under the dirt and strange growths, could be brought somehow by someone into a bloom...