CHENNAI: It was a sweltering summer afternoon when I saw it. A signboard that said ‘Quibble Island Cemetery’.
By then I had already walked a kilometre under the hot sun and was looking to get back home.
But the signboard was intriguing. It was almost as if the cemetery was drawing me towards it.
In all probability, I would have crossed the road and entered the quaint burial ground had it not been for the auto rickshaw that stopped by and offered to take me home.
In less than two days, I was back. More than 200 years old, this cemetery is located on a river island, formed by the Adyar River and its tributary and is situated at MRC Nagar on the DGS Dhinakaran road.
The large half-open gates remind you of the pearly gates of heaven, only these are slightly rusted and there is no St Peter waiting for you. Instead, 38-year-old Jaan Uday Kumar comes to greet you.
A tall, dark man with a burly figure, Jaan says that four generations of his family have been involved in taking care of the cemetery. Jaan lives in the courtyard of the cemetery along with his family of six and two pet dogs.
Offering to show us around, Jaan first guides us to one of the oldest and most interesting graves – that of three children – Edward, Wilfred and Amelia. The grave looks like a miniature castle with its finely sculpted spires and ivy-lined walls.
Buried by their parents William and Amelia Donachue in the early 1880s, these children were barely three when they passed away.
And standing by their beautifully built grave, I couldn’t help but think of the grief of the Donachues on having to bury their kids.
Perhaps Jaan sensed the gloom, he took us to the most popular grave on Quibble island, that of comedian JP Chandrababu. Jaan recollected how the place had to be cordoned off by the police as popular film stars and politicians came to pay their last respects.
“Even today, Chandrababu’s fans visit the grave and place a garland or bouquet on it,” says Jaan.
And then, he excitedly pointed at another grave that had a Tamil couplet inscribed on it. “It’s the grave of my almost namesake – Valampuri John,” he said with an impish grin. Inscribed on John’s grave is a couplet about the finality of death, one of his own compositions.
The cemetery has graves of every kind – there is one with four angels surrounding it and another with a picture of the demised painted on. One particularly beautiful grave has a marble statue of a little girl on it.
There are even two graves of a Chinese couple – the Minsens, with Chinese inscriptions engraved on the surface.
At the entrance is a row of graves of women from a family and perpendicular to it, a row of graves of men from the same family.
But for me, the most beautiful of all was an isolated grave without a tombstone. All it had was a little plant with white flowers growing by its side.