Dining with the Dead, Ahmedabad, Gujarat India


On your first dating  with a gal will you risk taking your fiancée out for a meal or for tea and refreshment and get them served in the midst of a place where are buried the mortal remains of departed and blessed  souls?  It may sound morbid and silly; only a screwball would do such a thing. In India it is a no no - a sort of taboo sharing supper with some body  close to your heart in the cemetery.


Restaurant in the midst of graves, Ahmedabad, India dailymail.ok


The New Lucky Restaurant in  Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India has an  unusually strange, some times scary ambiance. This coffee house is built on a site of centuries-old Muslim cemetery. These revered departed  humans, when they were alive and moving around this area, would have seen the rise and fall of various rulers - Nawobs, Maratha  Peshvas and English sahibs. They are the silent remainders of our by-gone days.


 There are twelve graves inside the eatery and each one is sealed off with grill to avoid disturbing or tripping them  and are said to belong to a 16th CE Sufi saint who lived in this region. The tables are set between the graves, leaving enough space to walk around. The restaurant is always busy with guests unmindful of the blessed ones buried there and the owner says that the graves are his lucky mascot and is  is doing good business.One good gesture on the part of the owner is he begins his daily business by praying before the graves and cleaning and placing flowers at the  close of the business. 


Glad the restaurant owner has the blessings of the Sufi saint. Had he run this restaurant in other place - a grave yard of ordinary people, he and the visitors to the eatery would have been warned like this:


 
"We, who are blissfully buried here and who are

reliving our past horrible life with our nagging

wives, don't rest in peace here. We have come to

this silent world for peace and tranquility. If

disturbed, we will return, haunt and terrorize you

with vengeance. So, don't ever disturb our

already broken heart and bones. The pain

we had in our past life is yet to come down.''


Ref:
www.dailymail.co.uk