A night at the graveyard

Death perhaps is the most evident and yet the most shunned part of human life. People tend to avoid mention of it in their discussions in regular life, let alone living near the dead or visiting them. Even in a considerably modern city like mine, finding a companion to visit a cemetery is not very easy, never mind going there at night. Therefore, for preparation of this story, which was supposed to be an assignment, I decided to reach South Park Street cemetery at 11 pm, alone, and stay there for the night. However, due to the turn of some events, I reached some other smaller, yet equally infamous graveyard and decided to explore it instead.

Due to my previous idea about the dead, and living one's careful disassociation with them, I did not hope to have any living company in the graveyard at that hour and my assumption remained unchallenged for the first half of my stay there. At the beginning of my night at the cemetery, I, as an expression of my excitement, visited each of the graves, read names and whereabouts of their inhabitants. Unfortunately, the graveyard was too small to spend the entire night learning about its residents. Therefore, after some time I had to give up visiting the graves and sit under the shade, that once was made for guards. Little after 2 at morning I heard some sound. It seemed to have come from behind a distant grave, which was hiding a part of the wall. At the beginning, it did not seem to create much alarm, but after some time two silhouette images emerged with some bags. As had been anyone at my place, I got scared and hid behind one of the larger head stones. After sometimes I noticed that, the newer visitors were not exhibiting any suspicious behaviour. Instead, they were cleaning a part of the graveyard beside the wall with water. I kept observing them while they cleaned the place, lit a lamp, emptied their bags, chopped enormous amount of vegetables there, lit a sigri and began to cook something in a vessel. It was already half past four and the man lit another, fiercer stove and started frying flatbreads on it, when I gathered courage to come out of the darkness and introduce myself to those people. At the beginning, they were suspicious of my intention, but when they became sure that I am not from any authority or mean to harm to them they let me stay with them for rest of the night.

Talking to them, I realised that these people were running an illegal small snack shop at the broken wall of the cemetery and were preparing the food there like any other night. I was apprehensive of if people purchase food items from shops adjacent to the graveyard to which the man responded in positive. It seems that people do not mind eating beside the deads, till the food is clean and yet cheap and to test his claim I decided to stay a little longer, although it was already past dawn. Since the very early morning, people started gathering around the shop and the sale was impressive. This incident made me question this long practised separation of dead from the living. Is 21st century vacant enough to let the dead be left on their own?

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