A Stroll In The Cemetery

As in my previous post, I had been to the MediaCorp Radio on Monday for a radio interview. After the interview was done, it was still a few hours before I started work. Having nothing to do in the mean time, I suddenly thought of going to Bukit Brown Cemetery, which is not too far from MadiaCorp. I do not have any relatives "staying" inside, nor do I have any fetish for the dead, but being a cultural freak, I think cemeteries are great cultural grounds too, especially those old ones which reflects greatly on our nation's history.

When I was much younger, I used to be very afraid of such burial grounds, especially when my father drove his car on the PIE passing by Adam Road flyover and Old Police Academy areas. That stretch of the expressway was actually part of Bukit Brown/ Kheam Hock cemetery in the past, but the land was cleared in order to build the PIE. Therefore, imagine how scary it was with tombstones "staring" at you on both sides of the expressway! Now that I've grown up, I no longer fear such places, although I still dread going to the cemetery during Qing Ming festival as Choa Chu Kang cemetery, with all the concrete and little trees and grass, is a place far too hot and humid for me to bear. Bukit Brown cemetery, however, being one of the oldest surviving cemeteries left, is very shady, and is a more serene and cool place to actually tour around.

The roads inside the cemetery are not well-built; in fact they looked more like small lanes, and if one car is parked along the side, there's no way other vehicles from any direction to pass through. But I guess back in those days when the cemetery was open for burial, not many people would drive cars, so nobody would have thought of building wide lanes. Anyway, the tombstones in this cemetery are unlike those in Choa Chu Kang cemetery (referring to those built after the late 70s), which were built in neat rows and columns in various patches of land. The tombstones here were sparsely scattered, and were much bigger, at least two times larger than those in Choa Chu Kang. Even though the conditions of these tombstones had degraded over time, probably due to neglect, some of them still looked rather grand. There was one which even had got stone benches built around the little courtyard in front of the tombstone! However, I wasn't able to take a picture of it as it was situated on a high slope.

Halfway through my journey, I came to a T-junction where I saw a small shrine by the side of the junction. Inside the shrine's altar was various statues of Goddess of Mercy. Judging from the condition of the incense urn on the altar as well as the surroundings of the shrine, I supposed there is a caretaker looking after this shrine. However, after looking around my vicinity, I did not see a single soul (living one). There was a car parked beside the road as well, and I wondered where the driver had gone to.

As I ventured deeper into the cemetery snapping pictures, the sky suddenly turned dark. I quickly stopped snapping pictures and hurriedly left the cemetery in my motorbike. It is not fun to get caught in a sudden rain in a cemetery!