A quiet home.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The air is cold even though this is summer. Lichens are growing on the gravestones.

It is evening and The Delhi Walla is walking through the old cemetery of St Mary’s Church in Cholsey. The rail tracks run past the boundaries of this sleepy village. The sound of the London-bound trains pierce through the quiet air but fails to intrude into the cemetery’s inner silence.

Some of the tombs are resting grounds of men who died in the First World War. A rare sculpted grave is home to two people. The man died during the Great War and his wife died 45 years later.

Large portions of the cemetery are taken over by long grass. A signage says: “This grass area is under conservation management to allow wild flowers to flourish.”

A novelist is also buried somewhere in this graveyard.

There she is.

Agatha Christie is lying at one corner of the cemetery. Like most graves here, the mystery writer’s grave consists of only a tombstone. Roses and daisies are growing around it. Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie seems at peace.

The grave with no mystery

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