Having visited the Jewish cemetery in Kolkata, we hailed an autorickshaw to carry us to College Street. There was already one passenger in the three-wheeler that stopped for us. He moved from his seat in the rear of the vehicle to make room for us, and then sat next to the driver on his seat. After going a short distance, our driver stopped to pick up another passenger, who squeezed into the seat alongside us. She disembarked after we had driven a few blocks further, and handed the driver a few rupees. After we left the autorickshaw and paid the driver a modest fee, the other passenger continued his journey in the vehicle. Like most autorickshaws in Kolkata, the one we had just taken was a shared cab that ran on a pre-determined route.

On the way, our autorickshaw rushed past a gateway on Narkeldanga Main Road, which I noticed was marked “Greek Cemetery”. Established in 1777, it is India’s only Greek cemetery. In Henry Cotton’s encyclopaedic “Calcutta Old and New” (published in 1907), he noted that the first “eminent” Greek settler in Kolkata was Hadjee Alexios Argyree, who arrived in Bengal in 1750, and worked as an interpreter. Other Greeks in Kolkata were involved in trade and commerce. The city’s only Greek church was erected in 1780, and still stands near Kalighat on Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road, along which we often travel between central Kolkata and Tollygunge to the south of it. The well-maintained building is neo-classical in style, and Greek Orthodox services are held there regularly.  Today, there are few if any Greeks left in Kolkata, and the cemetery in Narkeldanga, home to about 300 graves, is in a sad state of disrepair (according to a report in the online Times of India, dated March 2018).