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A review by mansimudgal
Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory by Aanchal Malhotra
5.0
A good book helps you feel and makes you think things you haven’t given much thought before.
Remnants of a Separation by @aanch_m does that and more. The book manages to talk about and discuss batwara (partition) of India and Pakistan through material objects brought by refugees on either side during what was perhaps the largest mass migrations in human history with violence on a scale that had seldom been seen before. With Trains full of dead mutilated bodies on either side, gendered violence on women with rapes and abduction; families splitting apart.
.
My family happened to be on the right side of a bureaucratic exercise; a Hindu in India in a town called Rewari in Haryana. We came out relatively unscathed so growing up so many years later I have viewed this event in a detached manner, where human bodies felt like statistics and Pakistan another country just like all others.
After reading this book I feel like a different person; imagine running away from your homes and lives in the middle of the night with only those possessions you can carry on your person, things that can be hidden so that you aren’t robbed; some utensils for some, a bit of jewellery for others, photographs, a shawl.
.
What item will you take while you flee for your lives?
The book is bittersweet, I felt for Bano a third generation migrant to Pakistan and her fear of her grandmother’s native tongue Samanishahi being lost to her after her father’s death; the only people speaking it would be those across the border.
A yearning for houses, bazaars of Karachi.. of Sindh; Of a man’s home in Jullendur whose stone plaque made his way back to him after so many years.
Woh ghar, Woh Bachpan, woh aangan, woh garmiyaan, woh sardiyan (that house, that childhood, that courtyard, those summers, those winters).
.
I loved how the author brought out all these memories that were repressed or talked of depending on people through objects, the things not being just that anymore but a gateway to a life lived beyond the borders.
Is it heartbreaking?Yes, but it’s also hopeful and nostalgic because as long as love stays in between people on both sides there is hope.
- Mansi
Remnants of a Separation by @aanch_m does that and more. The book manages to talk about and discuss batwara (partition) of India and Pakistan through material objects brought by refugees on either side during what was perhaps the largest mass migrations in human history with violence on a scale that had seldom been seen before. With Trains full of dead mutilated bodies on either side, gendered violence on women with rapes and abduction; families splitting apart.
.
My family happened to be on the right side of a bureaucratic exercise; a Hindu in India in a town called Rewari in Haryana. We came out relatively unscathed so growing up so many years later I have viewed this event in a detached manner, where human bodies felt like statistics and Pakistan another country just like all others.
After reading this book I feel like a different person; imagine running away from your homes and lives in the middle of the night with only those possessions you can carry on your person, things that can be hidden so that you aren’t robbed; some utensils for some, a bit of jewellery for others, photographs, a shawl.
.
What item will you take while you flee for your lives?
The book is bittersweet, I felt for Bano a third generation migrant to Pakistan and her fear of her grandmother’s native tongue Samanishahi being lost to her after her father’s death; the only people speaking it would be those across the border.
A yearning for houses, bazaars of Karachi.. of Sindh; Of a man’s home in Jullendur whose stone plaque made his way back to him after so many years.
Woh ghar, Woh Bachpan, woh aangan, woh garmiyaan, woh sardiyan (that house, that childhood, that courtyard, those summers, those winters).
.
I loved how the author brought out all these memories that were repressed or talked of depending on people through objects, the things not being just that anymore but a gateway to a life lived beyond the borders.
Is it heartbreaking?Yes, but it’s also hopeful and nostalgic because as long as love stays in between people on both sides there is hope.
- Mansi