Park Street Heritage Walk (Paye Paye Park Street) was arranged as part of Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsob. It coincided with All Souls’ Day which is held annually on 2nd November. Incidentally, the Halloween day falls on 31st October and All Saints’ Day is on 1 November.
The original name of Park Street is Burial Ground Road. So we started our walk from The Lower Circular Road Cemetery. We laid a wreath on the grave of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Madhusudan Dutta is the father of the Bengali sonnet.
The Cemetery contains remains of memorable personalities like
- Sri Haren Mookerjee – the first Bengali Governor of West Bengal & a Scholar and Patriot
- The Rev. Lal Behari Shah – founder of the first Blind School in India
- F. Andrews – a close associate and adviser of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindra Nath Tagore
- Drink Water Bethune – the Educationist who introduced Women Education for the first time in India
Then we visited the South Park Street Cemetry and by that time it had become dark. We were feeling eerie. The marble plaque at the gate reads “South Park Street Cemetery, Opened: 1769 Closed: 1790”. We walked around a pitch dark South Park Street Cemetery with just the distant moon showing us our way.