i was on one of those expeditions last sunday. Its usual sunday coffee and then realized, i didn’t explore the more south of pondicherry on way to cuddalore. Looking for things to scan. cities and towns are dense, but you never know when you will stumble on something.
On the way, i got to visit a cemetery. its cristian, french and indian, i believe. And it’s quite old, 1880s old. Marble sculptures on few graves, those are only ones i visited, Rest are decorated with plane cross on top of them. they maybe dead i am still alive or vise versa and presentation still mattered to me. Those marble sculptures are foreign and didn’t interest me, and stroll around. graves are tightly packed.
they were far less quotes on graves then i would expect. One grave specially, a french looking man and it said. “to have a sane and healthy children, do NOT marry into your family”. it surprised me to, i was like what did this man went through. Imagine you died and all you want to say is this. Imagine his children reading that, one will be like “did he just call us mental” the other one will be like “yep”.
Graves are funny, trying hard to exist and remembered. Obviously they are not built by the dead themself, still. All his life a man would try to live and recognized by pears, at least when dead one should take a rest. the details is these graves are built by people, who want to remember them. We involuntarily respect the dead, like “oooo, they are dead”. its not an accomplishment, they couldn’t help it, they had no choice. Some reason i imagined, all this grave are people died of old age. The questions is how many of them will choose to die, probably not many. when someone step into like a solider, saving some or killing themself like a coward, they do deserve sympathy. Thats why no one cries at a old man funeral. I am romanticizing dying young hear, feel free to disagree with me.
From there i crossed a bridge and a second left. continued till a beach arrived. Just after a temple, on a field beside the temple. One can put recognize a wooden setup. In Middle of the field, surrounded by nee length grass, just beside two abandoned fishing boats. My brave guess is it a part of a temple radham (vehicle) used for jatara on festive days. it looks ancient and turned gray. falling apart, yet can’t help but stay together. Like one part is hanging on another, and that on the next one. it probably is a 100 years old. Someone cared enough to preserve this when old radham was replaced with new one.
It setup in a way, so nothing can stop me to scan this. Scan i did. wooden sculpt is still sharp. 10:00 am to 3:50 PM, thats how long it took. largest scans yet, hopefully it’s good enough to show up on my website. 3582 photos. As i am in the process, i couldn’t help but to thing, how i am doing all this so this can exist and remembered.
Not every dead have a grave in this world.
some are burned of course.