“The fragrance of flowers”

DNA columnist Madhu Jain writes of her visit to the 400 acre Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England which contains the remains of 3,00,000 dead including several Zoroastrians ("A Metropolis for the dead and buried,” August 14, 2009).

"This was the largest burial ground in the world when it was opened in 1854 by the London Necropolis Company. (What a name, metropolis for the dead?) The company had its own private railway, with ‘funeral trains’ that brought the coffins from its private station just outside Waterloo to its cemetery near Woking...

"The densely populated necropolis with imposing avenues of redwoods, Chilean pines and wild flowers here and there is the final resting ground for innumerable desis and subcontinentals. It is said to house the oldest Muslim cemetery in this country.

"Death mirrors life here. Especially in its distinctions and divisions: there are separate grounds for Sunnis, Ahmadiy­yas, Ismailis and Bohra Muslims. Brookwood Cemetery’s ocean of graves is certainly eclectic, including as it does pauper burial areas, the WWI American Cemetery, the grave of the master of the household of Queen Victoria, King Edward, the martyr and the painter John Singer Sargent, not to speak of Turkish Air Force pilots who died in alien skies during the Second World War.

Tombs and memorials of eminent Bombay Parsis at the Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England

"However, one of the most moving and aesthetically eloquent enclosures — amongst the best kept — is the Zoroastrian Burial Grounds. It contains the graves and memorials of Zoroastrians, a large number of them Parsis from Bombay. The mausoleums of the Tata family, the Wadias and the Jehangirs are beautiful and moving, as is the statuary, particularly of Parsi women.

"You have to tread softly in this vast city of the silent. However, the words inscribed on some of the mausoleums cry out loud — to be remembered by the living passing by. Particularly heart-tugging are the words of Nowrosjee Noshir Wadia who asks posterity sitting ‘beside winter fires to reverently remember his name’… while he lies there alone in the dark. He also asks posterity to ‘offer to our disembodied spirit the fragrance of flowers and fruit…’ during summer. And, of course, reverently remember his name.

"There is a lot of loneliness out there, in this city of the dead.”