Park Street Cemetery

Ecotone's current blogging topic is Cemeteries. Here's my contribution:

Park Street Cemetery was inaugurated in 1767, the oldest cemetery in Calcutta. Inside the gate the maintenance staff, three or four men, sat idly on a charpoy. The mausoleum nearest the exit was being lived in. It was furnished with a cot, a plastic water pot, a few pieces of cloth.

Mausolea shaped like houses were crowded together amid tall crotons and palms. It was like coming upon ancient ruins in a jungle. There was a skyline of domes and flat roofs and towers, all the same brown cement with chunks fallen away to show the red brick structure, built for the most part along wide paths. Everything was green and damp. The tops of monuments, urns and such, were broken off and lying on the grass. Shouting boys played cricket among the graves. There were cawing crows, and intermittent sounds of traffic from Park Street.

One of the biggest tombs - pyramid above pediment - contained the body of "Elizabeth Jane Barwell - 'the celebrated Miss Sanderson' aged about 23."

The most elaborate tomb belonged to Rose Aylmer, who died in 1800 aged 20. The poet Walter Savage Landor wrote a poem to her, which was inscribed on her tomb:

Ah, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue every grace,
Rose Aylmer, all were thine...

Mrs. Martha Goodland, 21 March, 1785, aged 23:

If ever Tears deservedly were Shed
If ever Grief was due to Virtue Dead
Thy Merit Martha and thy Spotless Ways
Claim Tears from all, for all allowed them praise
Thy Strength of Mind we scarce shall meet again
Shewn through a long, most agonising Pain
Thy warm affection as a Wife or Friend
Make all who knew you weep your cruel End
Cruel Alas - but this one thing were sure
Those Virtues that in life you held so pure
Will be repaid - This Thought and this alone
Your friends have left to mitigate their Moan
Whose Heart is torn is wretched while he lives
And only prays one day to reach that shore
To meet his Martha and to part no more.

I liked the home-made verses - they made me feel that real people had written them and grieved. As in all British cemeteries in India, there were too many graves of young wives, and very young children.

When I left, a gang of young boys was half in and half out of the gate, shouting and laughing. An old Anglo-Indian man drove them out and said to me, "They won't listen! They're animals!"