From dust to no dust

After the sumptuous wedding feast and after wishing the newly married couple we took leave from the host in Kottayam, Kerala. The marriage and the feast were organised in the Church, an orthodox Syrian Church located on the banks of slowly flowing, gentle and serene Minachil Puzha.

I asked my wife to wait at the main gate of the Church and I started walking towards the main road to hire an auto rickshaw. The cemetery of the Church was by side of the single lane road and the boundary wall of the cemetery was low. The cleanliness of the cemetery attracted my attention. I stopped for a moment. I looked at the 'graves' with attention. I noticed that the 'graves' looked different from the Christian graves I have seen at different locations in India. Honestly, this was the first time I was observing a cemetery of any denomination of the Christians so closely.

The memorials enveloped in black glossy granite stone looked beautiful and elegant. Large headstones further enhanced the grandeur and elegance of the monuments. Suddenly, I noticed shining steel round hooks embedded on the top of the monuments. The hooks were fixed in a pattern, two hooks on each side of the two inches thick square flat stone. It appeared as if it was inserted by design, as a lifting arrangement. The top stone was like a cover you see on the pits. I looked across the cemetery and I noticed similar lifting arrangements on all the monuments. Even those monuments constructed of concrete conformed to the structural details of the granite cladded monuments. It was quite apparent that these hooks were lifting arrangements fixed in the three units of monument cover.

The other interesting feature I noticed was the elevation of the monuments. Very few monuments were flat, flushing the ground level. They appeared to be the oldest monuments of the cemetery. Second type of monuments were made of concrete. The concrete monuments were higher compared to the ground flushing monuments. The third category of monuments consisted of granite stone cladded monuments. They were highest among all the monuments and looked recent and new. These monuments looked like tanks placed above the ground.

While I walked further, at the end of the cemetery, I noticed a small white colored building with a stacked box-like formation marked with C/1, C/2 and so on. I had no clue about this structure. I decided to check with my host about the monuments and the white colored structure.

"If your ancestors have donated land to the Church, you would get a free land for burial else you have to buy a place in the cemetery. Kerala has an acute shortage of land. The monuments you saw in the open are family owned and they have a provision of layered burial," the host said.

"Please explain," I requested.

"Inside the monument there is a structure on which you can place the coffin. After some years the coffin withers and the dead body decomposes, and the reduced small mass of the remains is pushed down so that the grave is re-used. Every family will have one such grave. Independent, one-time use, and permanent graves have become rare now," he said.

"What was that white colored structure?"

"It is a cellar (vault). Since land has become costly and scarce, the dead body is kept inside the cellar. The other end of the cellar is connected to a well like pit. The cellar floor is tilted in the direction of the well. The dead body in the cellar gets decomposed after some time. The gate of the cellar is opened, and the remains of the dead body is pushed into the well so that the cellar (vault) can be re-used. There are two types of cellars, common and family owned. The common cellar is used by any of the members of the Church. Family cellar comes at a higher price and is used by the members of the family."

This was something completely new to me. I had seen photographs of stacked vaults in Latin American countries but not in India.

While travelling from Allapuzha (Alleppey) to Ernakulam (Kochi) I noticed vaults in the cemeteries near the railway track. Incidentally, all the cemeteries with vaults also contained yellow brass metal high mast in front of Church. I thought this phenomenon of burial in vaults is only within Syrian-Orthodox Christians of Kerala and an age-old tradition.

"No Sir, all the denominations of Christians have adopted this method of burial. In my Church in my village it started in 2000," said one of the Christian students at the college I was conducting qualitative research methodology workshop.

"Sir, the new practice has also raised controversy as the pit connected to the vault is not too deep and it leaches ground water," said another student.

"In my village the Church is at a higher location on the mountain. After the practice of cellar burial commenced people living on the valley side complain about the quality of water in their wells," the first student said.

"Was there no protest by the members of the Church when they started this tradition?"

"There were murmurs but there was also an issue of affordability. Due to real estate the price of land has increased exponentially. The Vicars sat together and decided about this ritual. The option of cremation was harsher and against the beliefs of Christianity. People respect Vicars. They will not go against the decision of Vicars. Thus, the new burial ritual was adopted by the Christians," he said.

"Is this burial ritual observed only by the Syrian-Orthodox Christians?"

"No, all the denominations of Christians have adopted this system," he said.

"Even though it is very less but Muslims too are adopting this system of burial in Kerala," said the second student.