Memento Mori

This unimpressive portal is one of our latest adventures, a small one, but impactful nonetheless. This was one that even Ashraf, our Hyderabadi driver, was unaware of.

Deb and I went in search of this graveyard/tomb complex yesterday. It was a mostly-forgotten family plot tucked away in a poor neighborhood across from a large medical complex south of the city center. The family was the Paigahs, descended from Saudis who came here and prominent members at court as the Nawabs to the rulers of Hyderabad. One of the family members buried here had the Falaknuma Palace built.

But no matter how splendid the home he built (it was actually more elegant than the Nizam's Chowmahalla Palace. Why would you build a house to stick in your boss' face? But that is another story) here is where he rests.

As we went through the complex, attended by a watchman who seemed happy to see someone visit besides the local children who ran up and down the open spaces, I couldn't help but think of Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard". While Gray spoke of common folk, the poem speaks of what splendid things we all leave of this life and come to the same mortal end (we're not going anywhere else in this musing). These tombs were meant to be a garden, but as we know, the garden needs to be tended and like so many of India's treasures, nature was reclaiming the Paigah's legacy as well.

I can only conclude with the last lines of the poem's epitaph:
"No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God."