The Lower Circular Road Cemetery woke each morning before the city of Kolkata did. Before trams clanged awake, before kettles whistled in nearby kitchens, before the first newspaper slapped against a veranda floor, the cemetery breathed, slow, ancient, and vegetal. Dew clung to marble like unshed tears. Moss thickened the edges of bevelled names on cold stones that once commanded rooms. Leaves fell with the patience of monks. And beneath the greatest banyan, in this grove of the dead, its roots dropping from the sky like the braids of time itself, lived the old man Botuk on a wobbly bamboo charpoy.
The greybeard never slept or spent much time in his allotted single room quarter, which he only used for storing some of his belongings. He mostly lived under the banyan, and had been here so long that even the cemetery guards who came and went spoke of him like a fixture: the old caretaker, the man who knows every grave, the one who talks to the dead as if they might answer. Botuk did not mind. The dead, at least, did not hurry away when he spoke or smiled.
The old caretaker’s day began with sweeping, slow arcs of the broom tracing the curves of paths laid out in the 1840s, when the city christened by the British as Calcutta was still learning to pronounce itself as the Empire’s prized “Jewel in the crown.” Botuk’s broom raised the smell of wet leaves, bat droppings, old flowers, and stone dust. It was a smell that he loved. And it smelled like the truth.
As he swept, he greeted the graves softly, the way one greets elders. “Good morning, Dotto-babu,” he murmured near the resting place of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, the poet who had loved too fiercely and died too young, who had ventured far from home to earn a name in English Literature, only to return to Calcutta and find literary pleasures in his mother tongue, Bengali. Now resting eternally, buried in the soil of his beloved city with his wife Henrietta beside him. Jasmine often crept here, white and stubborn. “Bethune-saheb,” Botuk nodded at the tall, restrained monument of John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, whose belief in educating women had once caused polite outrage and later a quiet revolution. He paused longer near Charles Freer Andrews, Deenabandhu, Mahatma Gandhi’s friend, whose stone seemed less cold than the others, as if compassion still radiated faintly from it. Botuk knew their stories, not from books, but from years of listening to historians, wanderers, grieving families, and sometimes from the stones themselves. For stones speak, if you are willing to listen, and give them time. And time was something that the old man had.
Though once, long ago, he had a different life. He had been a tram conductor in north Calcutta, ringing bells and shouting stops, his voice strong and certain. His wife Kamala sold flowers near Sealdah, marigolds in the morning, tuberoses at dusk. Their Christian home was small and always smelled of rice, incense, and wet earth. On winter nights, they slept close, sharing warmth and dreams. Their son Ratan was born during Durga Puja, red-faced and loud, as if announcing himself to the world.
Then, time did what it always does, bringing change, sometimes rise and sometimes downfall. For Botuk, it was the latter. The man lost his job, and their financial condition deteriorated very fast. Kamala fell ill one winter that felt colder than others. Fever lingered. Medicine drained their savings. The house grew quieter. One morning, Botuk woke to a silence so complete it felt like being buried alive. Kamala’s face was peaceful, almost smiling, as if she had slipped away mid-thought.
Botuk could not buy a burial spot for his wife at any cemetery. Since he was a non-practising Christian not associated with any church, his wife could not even get a pauper’s burial. Instead, the boys of a local club paid for her to be cremated at the Nimtala ghat, from where he brought her ashes in a little earthen pot. He kept it on a shelf at home with trembling hands and a heart hollowed out like a gourd. After that, the house changed. Ratan grew restless, angry at the world for stealing his mother. By the time he was twenty, the city felt too small, his father too broken. One afternoon, after a sharp argument that ended in words neither could take back, Ratan left with a backpack and a promise to write. He never did. Botuk waited years. Letters became prayers. Prayers thinned into habit. Habit turned into silence. It was around then that he got the job at the cemetery. At first, it was only work, and later, it became a refuge. Eventually, it became home. And many years passed.
By the week before Christmas of 2025, the cemetery changed its mood. The air sharpened. Mornings carried a faint smell of wood smoke from nearby shanties. Somewhere beyond the great walls, churches rehearsed their choirs, broken fragments of hymns floating in like wandering souls. Bells practised patience.
Sometimes, after his morning rounds, Botuk stood near the main gate and listened to the world outside. At the junction of Mother Teresa Sarani and Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, life roared. White cabs honked and zoomed by, rickshaws creaked under impossible loads, and buses exhaled tiredly. The air carried layers of smell, hot oil from telebhaja or fritter stalls, sweet jhalmuri or spicy puffed rice mixed with coriander and lime, Mughlai dishes such as Nihari and Biryani brewing overnight to serve early bird meat-loving breakfast seekers, diesel fumes sharp as reprimands. From nearby mosques came the call to prayer, rising and falling like breath itself, echoing through lanes where Muslim families lived cheek by jowl with mechanics and traders. Across the road, the aftermarket car-parts bazaar gleamed with metal, spark plugs, tyres, and steering wheels stacked like offerings. Oil, rubber, rust, and sunlight mingled there. Schoolchildren in neat uniforms cut through the chaos, laughter bouncing off walls, shoes scuffing purposefully toward buildings hidden behind peeling facades.
And if Botuk turned his head just so, he could feel the pull of Park Street, the slow brightening of windows, Christmas lights strung across the wide road, wreaths climbing glass, bakeries perfuming the air with butter and sugar, jazz notes rehearsing themselves for nightfall. Life rushed past the cemetery walls, noisy and insistent. Inside, time rested its bones.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Botuk was repairing the hinge of the back gate, the one that never appeared on maps, when he heard hurried footsteps. The street children came together, quieter than usual. Pintu led them, his face streaked with grime and something wetter. In his arms lay a small black puppy, its body unnaturally still, one ear bent like a folded leaf. “It happened on the road,” Pintu said. “The car didn’t stop.”
The puppy had followed them for weeks. Slept in their pile of rags. Licked their fingers clean of cheap biscuit crumbs. Barked bravely at shadows much larger than itself. Botuk knelt slowly. He touched the puppy’s fur. It was already cooling. “I’m sorry, little one,” he whispered. They asked no questions. They already knew the answer. They wanted to bury him somewhere where the little soul could be remembered.
They moved through the cemetery together, Botuk leading, children following, the city held at bay by high brick walls and ancient trees. The banyan watched them approach, its aerial roots swaying slightly, as if acknowledging old acquaintances. They searched for soft ground, away from marked graves. Botuk knew every patch where earth still remembered how to yield. As he pressed his fingers into the soil near a tangle of roots and fallen flowers, his knuckles struck stone.
A tiny headstone emerged, barely visible beneath moss and time. Botuk brushed it clean. The inscription was faint but legible, the words carved with care: “Roscoe, faithful friend. In fields of light may you run again. 1894–1899.” Nothing more. The children stared. Pintu traced the letters with his finger, reverent. “Another dog?” he asked. “Yes,” Botuk said, his voice thick. “Long ago.”
A man had been watching from a distance, a tall figure with a notebook and a scarf looped twice around his neck. He approached now, careful not to disturb the moment. “I’ve been looking for something like that,” the man said softly. “I’m a historian. Pet burials here were spoken of… but never recorded properly.”
Botuk looked at him, surprised but not displeased. “They were loved,” Botuk said simply. “That was enough.” Together, they buried the puppy beside Roscoe, earth closing gently, as if tucking a child into sleep. The historian listened as Botuk spoke, not just of Roscoe, but of other stories: a pony buried near a fence after carrying a child for years; a parrot whose owner carved verses for him; dogs who crossed oceans and never left their masters’ sides. “Official records forget,” Botuk said. “But the ground remembers.”
After burying the puppy, the children left. The historian wandered off between graves, making notes in his book, and Botuk went to tend to unwanted vegetation on ancient and recent graves. And that night, as always, Botuk opened the back gate. The children slipped in like shadows, gathering near the small fire he built with practised hands. Flames crackled. Smoke rose straight into the cold sky. The historian appeared, notebook closed, listening instead, it seems he had not left the place.
Botuk told stories. The historian added dates, contexts, and voices from old letters. Together, they painted a world where love crossed species and centuries. The children listened wide-eyed, warmth creeping into their fingers and hearts. Above them, the banyan whispered. Leaves rustled. Somewhere far away, a bell rang once. And then another.
Christmas morning arrived gently. Light filtered through fog like forgiveness. The cemetery glowed, stones pale gold, dew sparkling, birds daring the cold. Church bells rang fuller now, confident, joyous. Botuk walked the paths more slowly than usual. He felt something unfamiliar in his chest, not an ache, but a lift. Near the banyan, someone had placed flowers. Fresh. Red and white. Botuk knelt – for Kamala, for Ratan, wherever he was, for Roscoe, for the puppy, and for himself. From beyond the wall came laughter, children running, a hymn rising, life insisting. Botuk stood beneath the banyan’s vast shadow, no longer lonely, just rooted. Christmas had come, not to erase loss, but to soften it. Love had found him again. And the cemetery breathed on.
Copyright © 2025 TRISHIKH DASGUPTA
This work of fiction, written by Trishikh Dasgupta is the author’s sole intellectual property. Some characters, incidents, places, and facts may be real while some fictitious. All rights are reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including printing, photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, send an email to the author at trishikh@gmail.com or get in touch with Trishikh on the CONTACT page of this website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trishikh Dasgupta
Adventurer, philosopher, writer, painter, photographer, craftsman, innovator, or just a momentary speck in the universe flickering to leave behind a footprint on the sands of time... READ MORE
Weekend Stories by Trishikh 