“By itself, an object is just an object. It’s just a. thing. It doesn’t have any meaning. It can be in your house for decades and you won’t care. The minute you realise the story attached to it, or who it once belonged to, our where it once was, ii feel like you give it importance. You are embedding importance into the folds of a dupatta, or the metal of a khaasdaan, a piece of jewellery, a notebook. These are just meaningless without memory.”
When we’re holding onto the pieces of the past, whatever form they may take, are we understanding the weight of them within our palms, within our hearts as we go about our daily lives? A massive notion for South East Asia is the history of the sub-continent and the imparted, internalised trauma of Partition. One of the world’s largest documented migration goes unspoken by generations, because there simply aren’t words to encompass the scale of displacement which has penetrated and settled past the psyche and into the daily lives of this land’s people.
“What is it about the burden of the border that denies us the acceptance for shared identity on a larger level?”
A bundle of things are tied into the strings of South East Asia, and as they are uncovered by historians, artists, authors and other academics, it is the people who braved Partition who design what their following generations make of it.
Listen in to this episode of Notes from Nomads where South Asian author and artist, Aanchal Malhotra, shares stories from her time researching how Partition has been remembered and internalised by South Asians, discusses the beauty in heirlooms, the development in how the use of objects changes overtime, and more!
Do check out books from Aanchal’s most revisited authors:
Anuradha Roy, Indian novelist, journalist
Svetlana Alexievich, Belarusian author, historian
Anam Zakaria, Pakistani writer
Notes from Nomads is a video-podcast subsection of TMC Archives where people from various backgrounds and expertise come together to raise questions about the flip-side of the world and take on discovering answers through research and experiences, collecting them under one roof.
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Partition, Remembrances and Memorabilia - Episode 3