On a sunny Monday morning, 21-year-old Wilfred Bill Clinton and a middle-aged mason, Narasimha, armed with two big sticks, make their way through a dense thicket, mindful of potential encounters with snakes and other creepy-crawlies hidden beneath the dry leaves on the ground. Thorns scrape their bodies as they valiantly cut through the underbrush and tap the stones on their way with sticks to ensure a path free of camouflaged dangers.
This arduous task holds a profound purpose — to locate a grave that could bring comfort to a 74-year-old Irish woman, Sheila Shanley, who lives in the heritage town of Trim in County Meath, North Ireland. Her grand uncle, a British soldier who died 108 years ago, rested at what is now known as the Church of South India (CSI) Cemetery in Trimulgherry, a buzzing locality in Telangana’s Secunderabad.
Shanley, living thousands of miles away, has spent over four decades tirelessly searching online for any trace of her grandmother’s brother, Rifleman Michael Joseph Leonard, but his final resting place remained elusive. Hope rekindled when Shanley stumbled upon a news feature titled ‘Resting with Dignity a Century On’, published in The Hindu on December 16, 2019.
