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Journalism of Courage
Munnar8217;s British cemetery has an interesting, though tragic, origin. Visiting the hill station as a young bride in 1894, Eleanor Knight was so bewitched by its scenic beauty that she told her planter-husband, 8220;When I die, I8217;d like to be buried here.8221; Tragically enough, three days later cholera claimed her. Her grief-stricken spouse honoured her wish, burying her at the very spot where they had stood.
Eleanor8217;s grave, still extant, became the nucleus of a cemetery that gradually developed around it. Location-wise, it couldn8217;t have been better: the cemetery picturesquely slopes down a wooded hillside, its weather-beaten graves sheltered under the brooding silence of pines and firs. Below it stands the medieval-looking Christ Church built in 1911.
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.
