Indian restaurant in graveyard

The New Lucky Restaurant in Ahmadabad, India is located in a centuries-old Muslim cemetery. The cafe has been open for forty years and people are still dying to get in. (Sorry.) From Reuters:

Krishan Kutti Nair has helped run the restaurant built over a centuries-old Muslim cemetery for close to four decades, but he doesn't know who is buried in the cafe floor. Customers seem to like the graves, which resemble small cement coffins, and that's enough for him.

"The graveyard is good luck," Nair said one recent afternoon after the lunch rush. "Our business is better because of the graveyard."

The graves are painted green, stand about shin high, and every day the manager decorates each of them with a single dried flower. They're scattered randomly across the restaurant — one up front next to the cash register, three in the middle next to a table for two, four along the wall near the kitchen...

...The Hindu notion of death as merely an opportunity for rebirth makes the prospect less frightening than it is in the West, Alvi said. Although the tea shop cemetery is Muslim — Hindus cremate their dead — most Indians would feel comfortable relaxing in a cemetery, he said.

"Graveyards in India are never scary places," Alvi said. "We don't have a nice literature of horror stories so we don't have much fear of ghosts."

Link (Thanks, Sean Ness!)

[#1 posted by Bionicrat2 , December 17, 2007 10:48 AM]

Makes me think of this cafe in London.

[#2 posted by Rossifumi , December 17, 2007 11:10 AM]

Indians are not afraid of graveyards because like it was stated, they cremate their dead.

I think they would have more respect for the dead if they knew it was their mother, or sister, or brother they were eating next to.

[#3 posted by Antinous , December 17, 2007 11:39 AM]

Having an annual picnic at the grave of your ancestors is a pretty common thing in many cultures. In the US, our relationship to ancestor graves is pretty well summed up by the opening scenes of Night of the Living Dead.

[#4 posted by devophill , December 17, 2007 1:31 PM]

Indians are not afraid of graveyards because like it was stated, they cremate their dead.

I think they would have more respect for the dead if they knew it was their mother, or sister, or brother they were eating next to.

1. As stated in the article, Hindus cremate their dead. Not all Indians are Hindu.

B. In what way are they not respecting the dead? (By their standards, not yours.) I don't think it makes a difference whose grandmother it is.

C. ????

4. Profit!

[#5 posted by cugat , December 17, 2007 1:54 PM]

There's no cafe, but another awesome graveyard is the Merry Cemetary in the town of Maramures, Romania.

http://www.spirit.ro/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=