Most children beg for ice cream. I, at seven, demanded a graveyard. On our way from Partapur to Udaipur, Daddy pulled over by a lake flanked with graves. To my mother’s horror, her gap-toothed daughter wished to stay the night with the departed. My parents finally tore me away from that moonlit playground of bones, kicking, screaming and entirely enchanted. Even today, Mummy breaks into her own gap-toothed smile at the memory of her daughter’s chosen roommates.

Decades later, in Colombo, I find myself drawn to Kanatte, the Borella Cemetery. The city’s sprawling republic of the dead offers something we the living struggle with: An unruffled coexistence . Beneath its trees, faiths and races lie together, equal at last. The Buddhist monk and the Catholic nun sleep in the same dormitory. Th

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