When anyone talks about cemeteries in Calcutta, they tell you to visit the South Park Street Cemetery, famous for supposed ghosts and what not. But when I talk about a cemetery, I am talking about the Lower Circular Road Cemetery, also known as General Episcopal Cemetery. It’slocated on the crossing of Park Street and Lower Circular Road and houses some of my ancestors. The Lower Circular Road Cemetery was established on 1840 and is still operating as a functional cemetery. It contains approximately 12,000 graves including many former British East India Company employees, among others.
My mother, you, see, was Christian. I actually sometimes think that a cemetery is so much nicer than a cremation, you have a place you can visit where maybe something still remains of the person you love. The Lower Circular Road cemetery was close to where I lived while growing up. (So was the South Park Street one but that did not have that feel to it, you know what I mean?) That cemetery was on my list of walks, growing up. Not for the ancestors, not for the ghosts, but just because it was a pretty place to be in! My mother sometimes asked why I went there, was I just morbid? I don’t know, but I used to claim that Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s grave kept calling to me!
Go figure!
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