A Short-Term Lease on Eternity.(graves emptied in Singapore when cemetery land is needed)

Here you are, having settled your old bones down for what should be the rest of eternity, when someone comes knocking on your American oak coffin just 15 years into your slumber. "Sorry, mate, we need this space."

That's the way it is these days in Singapore, where anybody getting buried in the government-owned Choa Chu Kang Cemetery (the only one accepting "new" bodies) is guaranteed only this briefest of stays. The reason is dead simple: land is scarce.

Over the past two decades, the government has exhumed thousands of graves whenever it needed the ground for development. R.I.P. has thus taken on a weirdly transient connotation, rather like taking turns on a time share. Out you go after 15 years; in comes someone else for the next stint. And once dug up, you can't expect to be repotted somewhere else--unless your faith bans cremation, as in the case of Muslims, Jews or Parsis. Next stop is the crematorium and a little niche with a marble plaque in a state-supported columbarium. Mind you, it will be at the government's expense. But if no relatives claim your bones, your ashes will be scattered at sea.

That's the fate of many at the old Bidadari Christian Cemetery. Old, sprawling trees shade sparse tombs, many already dug up. Tall weeds and flowers have reclaimed the grounds, with angels and crosses seemingly floating on this grass sea. On the day I went I didn't see a soul, except for a lone jogger, amid the songs of birds and crickets. Alas, this place of meditative repose sits opposite a new train station, which the rail operators refuse to open until there is sufficient demand. So the deceased will just have to make way for higher-density housing.

Even I, a supposedly pragmatic Westerner, am troubled by this apparent disregard for one's ancestors. To ...