It’s really quite a pleasure to linger (and loiter) in Bhowanipore for its many intriguing facets alone. Still, one essential quarter lies detached, as it should be, from the ancient core. 
Emerging from a characteristic gully or bye-lane, nicely pictorial and dingy, as if dusk were gathering, the very non-Bhowaniporean impact of a busy arterial shatters the mood. Debendra Lal Khan Road is not the busiest route to the pleasures of Alipur, but the stout and sober wall enclosing Bhowanipore Cemetery guarantees a splendid isolation from urban effects.

A long time ago, I’d ‘looked in the door’ and was intrigued by the overgrown prospects, but hadn’t the time to explore. More recently, the place was hardly recognisable to me. Like the Scottish Cemetery, a few admirable relics remain, but the revamping has been extensive.
Not to minimise the other souls who repose here – and are still being added – but for the casual fan of historical footnotes, Bhowanipore is mostly known for its military graves. Though the date over the entrance says 1907, the site dates back to 1733. It also contains the remains of one of Charles Dickens’s sons.
But first, a sidetrack of note.
The first time I visited my friend Ruskin Bond in the heights above Mussoorie, over tiffin I mentioned my interest in things Calcuttan. As a latter-day Kim (all grown-up now, a sobriquet that brought a twinkle to his eye), I knew that Calcutta was not his specialty, but he added, almost in passing, that his father was buried there. I don’t think he specified Bhowanipore, though.
At any rate, years later, finally visiting the military section after many postponements, seeking out the elder Bond’s grave was not foremost in my mind, as the collective imagery all around was compelling, to say the least. 
Nevertheless, in a manner of  happenstance, if not serendipity, that often occurs in the great Bengali metropolis, this came to be. Randomly glancing at the rank-and-file name, suddenly there was one I knew: Aubrey Alexander Bond, Ruskin’s dad! Alas, he died in the War, when his son was around Kim’s age, I think. Unintentional mission accomplished, it was a pleasure to send the great storyteller a photo of the site.
As for another author’s son, not here! Or, more specifically, where? Walter Landor Dickens had come out to India, as second sons often did, seeking a career in the Company’s army. Facing debts and not much else after six forlorn years, he was due to be invalided home from his hill station post (Darjeeling, I would imagine). He came to Calcutta, where he was to take ship for England on the morrow. While communing with his mates, he suffered an aneurism and immediately expired.
His younger brother Francis, having joined the Bengal Mounted Police, looked forward to meeting him, either in Ft. William or the Ballygunge Cantonment, but all he found were his brother’s few pathetic possessions. Because of his rank as lieutenant, Walter was buried here in Bhowanipore, but over the years, the actual location was lost. 
Meanwhile, over at South Park Street Cemetery, Walter’s actual tombstone lies, rescued from certain oblivion in 1957 by enthusiastic literature and history students from Jadavpur University. They clearly had a romantic notion in mind, as Charlie named his second son after his writer pal Walter Savage Landor, whose lines just happen to adorn the corkscrew-topped tomb of his lost beloved, Rose Aylmer, not far away. I can add another layer of remote association, having encountered Landor’s own grave in Florence, and his son’s as well.
Dickens had sent out an inscription to be written on Walter’s stone, but I could never find any trace of it, as the poor fellow’s name itself is scarcely detectable. He was 22 years old.
With the cemetery proper duly covered, what makes this patch in the great Calcuttan matrix seem rural is to be found at its furthest point. Most cemeteries can be considered enclaves, but standing at the very edge, where a stretch of the old wall has collapsed and the graves almost meet the pasture that curves down to Tolly’s ash-black waters, its leisurely bend appears in what can pass as a natural state. 180 degrees of pretty genuine landscape. The nether bank is wooded, with just a hint of dwellings off to the right. You’d never know the Taj Bengal is just downstream, and the old Jail complex, Belvedere, National Library, and the zoo are out there too, yonder.
Stay curious, have fun, and be sure to come when Calcutta calls!