The living and the dead.

The quiet and lonely cemetery became crowded once again. The narrow and uneven routes will test your driving skills, occasionally making you about to brush your side mirrors with the other vehicles parked along the road side. Ice cream and drink sellers sprouted here and there.

The burning sunlight that can only be shaded away by the umbrellas or tree shades. The heat that can evaporates your perspiration instantaneously when you perspires. The lonely tombs can be easily identified; no fresh flowers, no repair, fallen out bricks and big cement cracks, water seeping thru from the underground seems like the amount of tears from the dead. The smell of dirty drains and slimy algae started to invade the cemented flooring. No incense, no burnt papers. The photographs faded too.

Some families came in big group like they are having a gathering. With all their curry and bee hoon, small portable tables, can drinks, they gathered under the shade and chatted heartily while the children played and ran around them. The modern teenagers, with trendy dyed locks, nice singlet, baseball caps, beach sandals were suddenly knitted into this traditional event, and they all looked seriously serious. With every steps and instruction told to them, they followed, no questions asked.

The tombs, each taking about a cube size, spacious enough for a person to stand in the front, probably at most, big enough to kneel down and that’s all. The earth god, which is said to be looking after the tomb, has a small little altar erected on the right hand side.

The tomb keepers would go round collecting the fees for maintaining and taking care of the tombs of their loved ones. Weeds were plucked out from the carpet grass, fresh flowers or bright plastic flowers were arranged in the vase. There were incense papers all around you. White ones, colored ones, some burnt, some thrown up high into the sky. There is always a possibility to step onto a piece with every step you take. Circles were drawn on the ground with white chalks, supposedly to serve as a protection circle for your loved one to collect what you will be giving them and to prevent the “others” from snatching, stealing or taking those into their possessions. The burning papers will then swirl up into the sky, strangely that always happen. That was said to be an indication that whatever you burnt will be carried by the wind and delivered to the dead.

Then comes the sunset. The crowds started to disperse, the living souls lessen with every minutes drawing nearer to the rising of the moon.

And once again, the peace and silence were returned back to the dead. They are alone once again till the next long awaited visit comes again, from their loved living ones, hopefully not forgetting the dead.