Horticultural Gardens, Taj Hash Sign Park Street Cemetery unveiled by Mayor

Hashers met at the Horticultural gardens entrance on Belvedere Road at 7 am. After breakfast at the Taj, hashers gathered at Park Street Cemetery for the unveiling of our landmark in Calcutta! Lee had brought the Hash banner. I had brought scissors and we stopped at Jaggu Bazaar on the way to buy cloth for the unveiling. The Mayor of Calcutta officially unveiled the Hash sign at Park Street cemetery after 10 am. There was press coverage too. The Hash picture is in the Telegraph, Times of India and Ananda Bazar Patrika.

The sign is in English and Bengali:

The South Park Street Cemetery was opened on August 25, 1767. Then a marshy and forested terrain, the ground was approached by a bund called the Burial Ground Road. The first person to be buried here was John Wood, a writer in the Customs House. Burials took place after dark with torchlights except military funerals that were accompanied by rolling guns. The cemetery hosts some colossal pyramids, catafalques, pavilions and obelisks and is one of the finest repositories of neo-classical funerary sculpture outside Europe. Famous people lie buried here: Eurasian poet, teacher and reformer, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, who died in 1831 at the age of 22. He taught at the Hindu College (renamed Presidency College); Sir William Jones, judge, Indologist and a major figure in the establishment of the Asiatic Society, whose monument stands the tallest here; Rose Aylmer, niece of Lady Russell, dead within a year of arrival at the tender age of 17, who continued to inspire her friend the poet Landor. His famous Ode to Rose was inscribed on her tomb, the Spiral Monument, in 1910. Also buried there are Major General John Garstin, architect of Calcutta's Town Hall and the Patna Gola; Major General Charles (Hindu) Stuart, a devout Hindu, who bathed in the Hooghly every morning, worshipped Hindu dieties and even took images to England when he went on leave -- the Hindu images on his grave stand testimony to his faith; Lt Col Robery Kyd, distinguished botanist and founder of the East India Company's Botanical Gardens. Other famous Calcutta personalities here are the Impeys, the Princeps and the Vansittarts -- Henry Vansittart and his wife, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. The graves tell a story of the many people and their occupations -- breeder of cattle, shipwright, keeper of jail, silversmith, school teachers, architect, translator, livery stablekeeper, printer, head tide-waiter, steward to the Governors-General, park superintendent, cooper, postmaster, surgeon, not to mention the undertaker -- who in their lifetime made British Calcutta the first city of the Raj.

Thanks and congratulations everyone for the joint effort.