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In September 2020, while I was hunting down old single screen cinema theaters in Uttarakhand, my friend Dr Shernaz Cama, founder director of Parzor, called. When she heard I was in Ranikhet, she asked me to do her a favor: Would I try and locate a century old aramgah that Parzor had lost track of? I asked her what an aramgah was and discovered the concept of the Zoroastrian burial ground. Until then I had not known of burial amongst Zoroastrians; it is a practice followed in small towns where the Zoroastrian population is small (sometimes even a single family) and where access to a tower of silence is not possible. However, no one in Ranikhet seemed to know about the aramgah.

I asked a friend, a local Ranikhet historian, Prof Anil Joshi, if he could recall where the aramgah was. It turned out he did remember, and the two of us went on a small adventure, walking down an overgrown and slippery mountain slope trying to locate it. We found the aramgah on a small plot of land at the edge of the cliff, with a stone wall and gate posts. And six graves. Of the gravestones that remained, only one had a legible inscription: "Mrs Banoobai K. J. Wania. Died 10-8-1925.”

The Wania family in Ranikhet had been facilitators for the British officers and soldiers of the cantonment. They were responsible for organizing ballroom events and parties as well as selling imported items of interest to people far away from their own country. The old bungalow still stands, though the family sold it decades ago. An erstwhile neighbor of the Wanias told me that family members used to visit the aramgah every few years, but the last visitor had come in the late 1990s.

This discovery sparked off my curiosity and I added aramgahs to the list of subjects I would like to photograph. As of December 2023, I have photographed 17 of the 30 known aramgahs in India… Dehradun has an aramgah on a plot of land leased from a Christian cemetery. This allowed the space to be cared for, and I found the same to be the case in Mussoorie. The caretaker of the Dehradun Christian cemetery was away on the afternoon I went there. There was no access at all as only he had the keys to the padlock on the huge gate!

The motorcycle mechanics across the road were intrigued by my presence and struck up a lively conversation with me. When they realized what I wanted they picked up a crowbar from their toolkit and broke the lock! Apparently the missing caretaker was their buddy and he wouldn’t have minded at all! They even refused my offer to buy them a new lock!

While in Mahabaleshwar on an aramgah road trip another Parsi friend suggested I meet the Iranis and partake of a meal at their restaurant. While chatting with the family, who were curious about my obsession with cemeteries and cinemas, Shekufey Irani, with tears in her eyes, mentioned her late grandmother having suddenly taken ill at a very young age and dying within a few hours in Mussoorie. She was buried in a small aramgah that already existed in a corner of the vast local Christian cemetery. Her family planted lilies on her grave that bloom to this day. While Shekufey was relating the story I quietly pulled out my iPad and placed it in front of her displaying the photo of her grandma’s grave. Let’s just say that it was a very emotional moment for her.

A few weeks later, I gifted her the print of a collage of images of her grandma’s last resting place, as a memento.

The aramgahs of Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani are a combination of sheer beauty and nuggets of Parsi history. The Panchgani one has a grave dedicated to Merwanji Mottabhai Mistry (1808-1898), remembered as the "First Parsee That Came To The Station With John Chesson, The Founder Of Panchgani.”

The Matheran aramgah is a place of almost celestial quietude. Much of Parsi/Matheran history is evident from the graves, the Lord family being one of the oldest (and now the last) Parsi families of the popular hill station. One of the gravestones is adorned with a marble horseshoe sculpture, as a tribute to the ponies and mules who have been ferrying people and goods from Dasturi Point for well over a century!

  the Ranikhet cemetery; gatepost of the Matheran aramgah

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw lies buried in the aramgah in Ooty under a slab of shiny black granite with the Indian Army’s five star logo of a Field Marshal (the Ashoka lions, a crossed baton and sabre, within a lotus blossom wreath) at the head and an Asho Farohar at the foot. I visited the Ooty aramgah shortly after the Indian Army Raising Day and Manekshaw’s grave was covered with wreaths. In a brief moment of sacrilege, I cleared all the wreaths and photographed the bare grave. And then replaced everything the way it had been. Growing up as a military kid, I was keenly aware of the legend of Sam Bahadur and stood before his memorial with immense respect.

New Delhi has two aramgahs. The one near Khan Market is extremely well maintained with at least 100 graves, some having very elaborately sculpted gravestones, others with Indian Army, Navy and Air Force insignia, vintage Air India motifs, et al. The second aramgah, which is older, is at the Delhi Parsi Anjuman complex near Delhi Gate where the last burial took place in the early 1900s.

While chatting with the priest there, he mentioned an aramgah in Srinagar, Kashmir. It was located deep within the Badami Bagh Cantonment. He mentioned a Pestonjee family, and a very famous Pestonjee Ka Ghoda (Pestonjee’s horse). After nearly 18 months of perseverance with the Indian Army, I still lacked permissions to go there. After all, an unknown civilian with a camera let loose in a very sensitive military cantonment was an absolute no-no! Finally I decided to ask for a favor. I called my old buddy, thespian Naseeruddin Shah, and asked him if his retired Indian Army officer brother Gen Zameeruddin Shah could possibly be of help. I sent him a letter of introduction and intent, and lo! a week later, the Directorate of Military Intelligence gave me clearance for access to  the Badami Bagh Cantonment!

There are no Parsis remaining in Kashmir. The Pestonjee family was famous for their very popular liquor store and for the almost life-size model of a white horse outside their establishment. The horse, it turned out, was a memento from White Horse Scotch Whiskey! Though the building with the liquor store had been demolished and replaced with a shopping mall, Pestonjee Ka Ghoda still stands proudly in the lobby area of the mall! The aramgah itself had 32 intact graves and one installation of all the broken bits of gravestones that had deteriorated over time. The plot of land had been gifted to the Srinagar Zoroastrian Parsis in 1893 by Maharaja Pratap Singh specifically for an aramgah; the Cantonment came up much later.

The aramgah in Simla is another example of age and beauty, located on a beautiful fir forested hillside on a plot of land leased from the adjacent Christian cemetery. The sound of the breeze rustling through the firs gives it an especially unique atmosphere.

A visit to my hometown Allahabad, now Prayagraj, found me in conversation with the Gandhi family, owners of the famous Palace Theatre. The late Feroze Gandhi, husband of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was from the same family, and is buried at the Allahabad aramgah. One of the interesting discoveries here was the presence of a 19th century horse-drawn hearse parked in a shed. The elderly caretaker could recall the time it was still in use and how the horses would be loaned from the nearby Police Lines when required!

The Lucknow aramgah too had an exceptional atmosphere of age and beauty, and the family history of the Nowrojee-Meherji-Viccajee family is buried in quiet graves. The Nowrojees came to Oudh (Lucknow) from Diu in the early 1840s, when Muhammad Ali Shah was the incumbent Nawab. They came as traders and fell in love with Lucknow and never left. The Meherjis came a little later, and were from Tarapore. Brothers Pestonji and Viccajee Meherji were also famous for the first and only coin ever minted by a Parsi, which came to be known as the Pestonshai Sicca in Hyderabad.

The Kanpur aramgah is much newer and very quiet. I found some emotional epitaphs inscribed on the marble gravestones which are an unusual feature in Zoroastrian aramgahs — since burial is not the norm in Zoroastrianism, nor are tombstones!

I have a parallel photography project concerning British era cemeteries. I have photographed around 50 18th /19th/  20th century British cemeteries across India. Interestingly, the tombstones in the aramgahs are fundamentally Christian ones, representing all the popular styles and designs of the relevant eras. The difference is in the motifs: instead of a cross, or a cherub, or an angel, or a dove, there is an Asho Farohar, and the everlasting flame and inscriptions in Gujarati, Avestan, English and even in Farsi! Curiously, Zoroastrianism is amongst the religions of the world that chooses to erase the physical existence of a human being after death. Consequently, finding tombstones of deceased Zoroastrians is an unexpected way of keeping alive their existential presence for photographers and researchers like myself, and a fascinating window into the lives of people I would otherwise never have known of.

At the Panchgani aramgah, the caretaker was intrigued by my fascination with cemeteries. He was curious to find out why I chose to travel across the country looking for these spaces and photographing inanimate tombstones. He saw little beauty in any of the graves and merely went about his work keeping them clean. I asked him to follow me to one particular grave and made him read the inscription, a dedication to a stillborn baby: "In Loving Memory Of Our Son Unnamed…” I then asked him to accompany me a few feet away from the grave and look at it from a distance. I asked him to imagine the scene on that day, February 21, 1928, when a grieving mother and father lowered the dead body of their tiny "Son Unnamed” into a pit, forever.

I pointed out to him that these spaces spoke to me as memories of the once living, their relationships and histories and vision of a time gone by. My mind was aroused to imagine those moments in the present. And I was able to express gratitude for being alive. 

Hemant Chaturvedi is an ex-cinematographer who has been a full-time still photographer since 2015. He also made a documentary film in 2022, Chhayaankan-The Management of Shadows.