Cemetry

Within different yards of each other, different centuries co-exist; To me this is an assortment of bare props that strive to hold on to a memory, keep the trace of a name, a date, sometimes even a face. The eternal regrets have in turn perished and the heart that felt such emotions is gently decomposing nearby. All that remain are the tombstones and the funerary trimmings...


How do you define a tomb? A block of granite with pediment? A marker ? A Cross ? A memory trace? An absence...
A thing closed to the living, open upon an elsewhere. The tomb distinguishes human time from featureless, animal eternity. The dead lie in a circumcised place accompanied by rituals and constraints. We all know that we have a direct access to this and yet we forget...



Perhaps we should be telling ourselves that things alone have virtues, ideas, that they alone observe the proprieties. That we do no more than follow behind, as best we can.



The creak of the metal gate, the tap of the cane, the smell of the fresh flowers, the crunch of the gravel chase away realities...beneath the headstone is a coffin, bones and nothing more. Nothing to worry about anymore. Nothing interesting even. The sky would be getting overcast

Photograph by Babul Bhatt