Everyone cried unashamedly at the news of this young pilot's death

IF YOU STROLL ACROSS THE GREEN SWATHE OF the Maidan in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) - past the monumental marble Victoria Memorial built to honour that Empress of India - and keep heading south, the city noise fades, and so too does the bustle.

- KAVITA PURI on an act of wartime heroism still remembered in Kolkata

Off Debendra Lal Khan Road by the Tolly Canal, and opposite the zoological garden, are the gates of Bhowanipore Cemetery. Walk through them and you enter a world of order and peace. At the back, beyond lines of graves from the 19th and 20th century, are the headstones of young, mainly British men who fought in both world wars and died here. Many perished from diseases such as malaria and smallpox; some were killed in accidents, and one was apparently murdered while off duty. Also here are the graves of 14 Scottish soldiers from the Black Watch battalion who died in the cyclone of 16 October 1942 in Midnapore, west of Kolkata, as well as troops from a merchant ship hit by the Japanese in the Second World War.