MUMBAI'S BAHAI AND ARMENIAN GRAVEYARD

This article appeared originally in Mumbai Mirror, of the Times Of India group.

"All the graves here are really old," says 13 year old Shahid. Shahid and his mother, after his father's demise, live with his Naani – a local bai – in Madonna Colony, Antop Hill. The colony was set up, just post independence, on an ancient British grave yard. So amidst cramped two storied hutments and open gutters stands a classic stone pillar, with sculptured Roman motifs. A tombstone was found while digging a drain in one house and cast into the street. A piece from it acting as floor stand for a makeshift roadside stall reads: "John Cowa… Who Died September 1…" Abbas Akhtarkhavari testifies to the adjoining year having read "1753".

Akhtarkhavari, employed by the Baha'i Spiritual Assembly maintains the nearly 2 centuries old Armenian cemetery in between this settlement and another newer one. This burial ground lost 3000 square feet of land to the other hutment group. "And was about to lose more, before Shaapoor Rowhani and Dr Aram Yegiazarian changed things," Akhtarkhavari tells. Rowhani, a Baha'i, owned Fountain Sizzlers at Fort. Dr Yegiazarian, an Armenian, ate there post Sunday service at the Armenian church. Both their graves lie in this cemetery. Their friendship sprouted the idea that the Baha'is should manage the graveyard of the dwindling Armenian community, keeping encroachers at bay, in return for shared space with Baha'i burials.

But old grave encroachments aren't new. The destruction of Armenian and Baha'i cemeteries in Azerbaijan , Georgia, Turkey or Iran has caused outcry for quite awhile. In Mumbai, the grand Byzantine building that's gone from being the Royal Albert Sailor's Home to the Maharashtra Police Headquarters today, was built on the site of the city's first British cemetery. Antop Hill was chosen as a site for Chinese, British, Armenian, Baha'i, Hindu and Muslim cemeteries because it was uninhabited. Today, the city's growth sheaths an underlying clash in the area between it's most voiceless: the immigrant poor and 'departed' dead.

"In memory thoult cherished be, While a spark of life remains, Till the dawn I long to see, when we both shall meet again," says an epitaph on an Armenian grave, under a white marble cross with flower and leaf sculptures. "Whither can a lover go but to the land of his beloved," spells a Baha'i reciprocal. Akhtarkhavari explains the different attitudes: "The Bahai's see this life as a 'womb' we leave to go to God." Another difference is that unlike the Christians, the Bahai's build vaults where they lower their coffin in the ground. "For this cemetery I've often created 'double vaults' to bury two family members - one above the other - in the same grave," says Akhtarkhavari as a boy carrying buckets of water for his tap-water deprived colony looks curiously over the cemetery wall. "But this isn't tradition – it's to solve the space problem."