Rest in peace

Despite the ravages of time, the inscriptions on the gravestones are still legible, keeping alive the memory of many a veteran planter. There are others too. Miles Martin, a 4-year-old, died in 1895 after falling off a pony. Two visitors, Morris and Williamson, were killed in 1927 when their car rammed into a bamboo-laden bullock cart. Charles Olney collapsed and died on the Munnar golf course in 1948. In all, 44 burials are recorded between 1894 and 1959.

The last expatriate burial, in 1959, was as tragic as the first. Two young planters, Andrew Paton and James Mayfield, drowned when their car skidded off the road into the Munnar river on a rainy night. Snatched away in the prime of life, their graves topped by identical tombstones stand next to each other, mutely signifying their togetherness in death.

An unusual feature of the cemetery is that both Catholics and Protestants are buried here. Another is that several crosses are laid flat on the graves instead of standing upright. In the past wild elephants used to repeatedly damage upstanding crosses, forcing maintenance crews to lay these horizontally on the graves after repair.

Yes, in keeping with Munnar8217;s hallowed British traditions, succeeding generations of planters right down to the present have ensured that the graves of their predecessors are maintained reasonably well.