Silent tales of a bygone era

As I neared the end of Park Street, breathing in the sights, sounds and cacophony of the erstwhile capital of British India, I chanced upon the South Park Street Cemetery. A semi-open iron gate flanked by two pink pillars and a friendly old watchman at the entrance beckoned me in. I sauntered along the narrow moss covered path flanked by graves on both sides and found myself on a trail down the pages of history, a history I had only read about in books and saw very differently until now.
This 248 year old cemetery was one of the earliest non-church cemeteries in the world and once the largest Christian cemetery outside Europe and America. The moss covered graves are a study in architectural grandeur and opulence, built in a medley of Gothic and Indo-Saracenic style with hyperbolized adornments of stone cupolas, towering colonnades and obelisks.
In this quiet tropical oasis lie buried the earliest members of the British diaspora in India, the young ambitious men and women who dared to make the perilous journey across an ocean into a terrain unknown, in search of fortune and in the service of their queen. The epitaphs on the tombstones told the tale of the trials and triumphs of building an empire. Army majors, sailors, scholars, the ‘most beautiful woman in Calcutta’ ,breeders of cattle, jail-keepers, head tide-waiters, postmasters, women on the lookout for suitable husbands all lie buried here, side by side. Their status in the society of that time was evident from the opulence or sheer simplicity of their graves and epitaphs.
Inside the cemetery with its abundant foliage the air was damp and cool and the smell of the wet Earth calmed my frayed nerves. The sunlight filtering through the tall trees made numerous patterns on the graves. The din of the bustling city outside was drowned by the silent stories of those buried here, the call of the birds and the rustling of leaves as they flirted with a slight wind.
Walking around this place made me think of how difficult life would have been for the earliest conquerors that set foot in India; to be in an unfamiliar land with a torrid tropical climate, falling prey to diseases or dying in battle and to be buried, alone, thousands of miles away from family and home. The experience helped humanize those I had only seen as oppressors till now .Whenever I go here again I will spend more time reading the epitaphs on the tombstones and would take along a friend so I could share this experience with someone close.