Graveyard vows

Don't get me wrong, this is in a lighter vein. Graveyard vows or Masana Vayragya/ Sankalpa mean that we take a rather philosophical view of life immediately after visiting a graveyard. PG Wodehouse, in a book, has quipped that he wished the villainous person was buried and then cremated as well, just in case. Nonetheless, when you are there, the atmosphere is eerie and you take a very forgiving view of life.

When we visit a graveyard for the first time, it is scary and we take a different vow: Never to visit again. I was in my early teens and had read the legendary Elegy written in a country churchyard by Thomas Gray. In those days, I used to tell my mother that we friends would study together for exams but instead we would roam about the Ulsuru lake. One evening, "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day" as per Grey, we found ourselves in Kalpally graveyard having entered there by mistake through MEG grounds adjoining the lake. Initially, we didn’t know where we were, till we found a few alabaster stones with by-gone dates and a few simmering mounds of earth with firewood in the yonder. We held our breath and ran through the length and exited by the Railway line. We restored ourselves with some roadside bonda and returned home. But the vow, never to visit graveyard remained.

Of course, this vow was very short-lived, as I had to go there and other places in India dozens of times as I lost several loved ones including my parents, brothers, uncles and aunties, as time went by.

But, what took the cake was visiting a graveyard without any compelling sad need. Guru, my schoolmate, was driving me to Southampton to his brother's home, and suddenly asked me, "Gnani, shall we stop by Stoke Poges, where Thomas Grey was buried." I remembered reading about the Churchyard, where Grey's mother was originally buried and which probably influenced his poem. So we stopped, spent a while in the graveyard and the church where his poem is inscribed on the walls. Of all the lines, the ones which make a deep impression are:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.