The following morning was wet. It stopped raining only in the middle of the afternoon. Feluda had managed to get hold of an old map of Calcutta and Howrah, going back to 1932. After a meal of khichuri and omelettes, he stuffed a paan into his mouth, lit a Charminar, and unfolded the map. In order to look at it properly in our living room. we had to push all the furniture out of the way, and create enough space on the floor to fit the map. It measured 6’x6’. Lalmohan Babu turned up as we were crawling all over it, inspecting old roads and streets, and Feluda was saying, ‘Don’t try looking for Rajani Sen Road. This whole area was a veritable jungle in those days!’ I noticed that Lalmohan Babu was smartly dressed in dark blue trousers and a yellow bush shirt. ‘Seventy-six trees came down yesterday during the storm,’ he announced. ‘And I’ve done what you told me to do. My car has a new horn which will not remind you of Hindi films, I assure you.’ We were not in a hurry to go out, so we waited until we’d had some tea. Then we set off in Lalmohan Babu’s car and I could see for myself the devastation caused by the storm. I had seen the press report that mentioned the number of uprooted trees, but had been unable to believe it. Now I counted nineteen trees—in some places, a number of branches—lying on the ground by the time we reached Park Street. Three of them were in Southern Avenue alone. It was staggering, although many of the fallen branches had been cleared away. As we reached the entrance to the Park Street cemetery (Feluda told us where we were going only when we reached Camac Street), I happened to glance at Lalmohan Babu. He appeared a bit subdued. Feluda looked enquiringly at him. ‘In 1941,’ Lalmohan Babu explained, ‘I was in Ranchi. There I saw an Englishman being buried. When the coffin was lowered into the grave, and they threw clods of earth . . . ugh, the sound they made was terrible!’ ‘You won’t have to hear that sound here,’ Feluda assured him. ‘There is no chance. In the last one hundred and twenty-five years, no one has been buried in this cemetery.’ The chowkidar’s room was to the right of the entrance. Anyone was free to enter the cemetery during the day, so presumably the chowkidar had little to do. ‘The only thing he must ensure,’ Feluda said, ‘is that no one makes off with a marble plaque. Genuine Italian marble would fetch a good price. Chowkidar!’ The man came out of his room. His appearance told us instantly that he hailed from Bihar. He was chewing tobacco; perhaps he had just put it in his mouth. ‘Was a Bengali Babu injured here yesterday? Hit by a falling tree?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Can we see that spot?’

‘Go down that path . . . right up to the end. Then if you turn left, you’ll see it. The tree is still lying there.’ We went down the paved path he indicated—overgrown with grass—and walked through rows of tombs. They were all twelve or fourteen feet high. At some distance, to our right, was a tomb as high as a three-storeyed house. Feluda said it was probably the tomb of the scholar, William Jones. It was the tallest tomb in Calcutta. Each tomb had either a white or a black marble plaque, with the dead person’s date of birth, the date on which he died and some other facts. Some large plaques had brief details of the person’s entire life. Most tombstones rose like columns. Their bases were broad, but they tapered off as they rose higher. ‘These are spooks in burkhas!’ proclaimed Lalmohan Babu. He was right in a way, except that these spooks were quite immobile. They were more like spooky guards, protecting the being that was buried underground, encased in a coffin. ‘Do you know what these columns are called in English? Each is an obelisk,’ Feluda told me. Lalmohan Babu repeated the word to himself about five times. I was darting quick looks at the plaques as I passed them by, reading aloud the names written on them: Jackson, Watts, Wells, Larkin, Gibbons, Oldham . . .! Some tombs bore the same family name—obviously the people were all related to one another. The earliest date I had noticed so far was 28 July 1779, twelve years before the French Revolution. When we reached the far end of the path, I realized how large the cemetery was. The sound of traffic going down Park Street had become quite faint. Feluda told me later that there were more than two thousand graves in that cemetery. Lalmohan Babu pointed at a block of apartments on Lower Circular Road, close to the cemetery, and declared that he would never live there, even if someone paid him a hundred thousand rupees to do so. The uprooted ‘tree’ turned out to be a large, leafy branch from a huge mango tree. It had crashed to the ground, destroying a large part of a tomb in the process. Several smaller branches were also strewn about. We walked towards the damaged tomb. The column rising from it was shorter than the others, barely reaching Lalmohan Babu’s shoulders. It was obvious that even before it was hit by the tree, it had been in a state of disrepair. The portion that had escaped being struck by the falling branch was cracked in several places. The plaster had worn off to expose the bricks within. The branch had also broken certain portions of the marble plaque. The broken pieces were scattered on the grass. The recent rains had turned the whole area wet and muddy, but the slush near this particular grave seemed worse than elsewhere in the cemetery. ‘That’s remarkable!’ exclaimed Lalmohan Babu. ‘The word “God” is still there