‘Kuch nahi laaye the. We brought nothing.’ (p.17) is the first response of many, writes Aanchal Malhotra; before objects and belongings with dormant memories surface, recalling the stories intertwined with the partition of India. What is specific about Remnants of a Separation is that it retells the narrative of the objects that crossed the border in 1947, intertwining it with the lives of the immigrants who carried it and the socio-cultural relevance it held. Migratory objects have been looked at as things bearing specific altering attachments to their owner, and in many cases, the following generations it was passed down to. The methodology employed is a non-linear one, cutting across time and geographic regions. The book compiles the author's interpretation, interviews, and images of the nineteen objects selected for narration. The selection is wide-ranging, from jewellery to kitchenware, and from a collection of poems to the stone plaque of a house. This allows varied casts and classes to express their experiences.
If we turn attention to the title, here, the remnants have been revisited as sites of memory, not as sites of history. In her accounts, the same object may have a different retelling; the association of the immigrant and the object is in transformation with the passing years and changing ownership. Malhotra hints at the amnesia surrounding some of these objects and equates it to the memories of the event. In this sense, objects have been repurposed as tools to chronicle the individual perspectives of the mass exodus. The first-hand recollections of partition fade with each passing day, and recording oral histories to better understand the event seems to have been a concern of the author. The book serves as a mnemonic device; what it can do is to question the larger scale, and stately perspective of the partition and subsequent exodus, by highlighting the people's memory of it, which survives in the photographs they carried, or utensils taken along while walking from one country to another. Tapping into the people's lives before the partition, Malhotra discusses ideas of community, family, and the individual. One of the retellings of John Grigor Taylor, born to a lieutenant colonel under the Raj, brings to light the networks and social connections in the first half of the twentieth century. It highlights the imperial influences involved in the making of the social fabric of the Indian society in the pre-partition era. The return of John Taylor to India after two years poses a dramatic mirror to the rapid change that India had undergone, and also the transformation that the social fabric had undergone. The memoir not only delves outwards but puts into words the internal journeys of the immigrants, as in the case of Prabhjot Kaur. Here, the emergence of a new self often temporally forgets the older self, and what is not often recollected becomes a story.
It is the humans who encode things with ideas of value, thoughts of association, and pictures of memory. Still, from a counterpoint of view, it is the tangible materiality and transformations of objects that can bring to light the social context they are placed in. Malhotra investigates objects in three dimensions, firstly, as established in time and their journeys in time; secondly, in their place and shifting geographical context; and lastly, through the context of memory, which often transcends the previous two. These together integrate an alternative retelling of the 1947 mass exodus.
If we turn attention to the title, here, the remnants have been revisited as sites of memory, not as sites of history. In her accounts, the same object may have a different retelling; the association of the immigrant and the object is in transformation with the passing years and changing ownership. Malhotra hints at the amnesia surrounding some of these objects and equates it to the memories of the event. In this sense, objects have been repurposed as tools to chronicle the individual perspectives of the mass exodus. The first-hand recollections of partition fade with each passing day, and recording oral histories to better understand the event seems to have been a concern of the author. The book serves as a mnemonic device; what it can do is to question the larger scale, and stately perspective of the partition and subsequent exodus, by highlighting the people's memory of it, which survives in the photographs they carried, or utensils taken along while walking from one country to another. Tapping into the people's lives before the partition, Malhotra discusses ideas of community, family, and the individual. One of the retellings of John Grigor Taylor, born to a lieutenant colonel under the Raj, brings to light the networks and social connections in the first half of the twentieth century. It highlights the imperial influences involved in the making of the social fabric of the Indian society in the pre-partition era. The return of John Taylor to India after two years poses a dramatic mirror to the rapid change that India had undergone, and also the transformation that the social fabric had undergone. The memoir not only delves outwards but puts into words the internal journeys of the immigrants, as in the case of Prabhjot Kaur. Here, the emergence of a new self often temporally forgets the older self, and what is not often recollected becomes a story.
It is the humans who encode things with ideas of value, thoughts of association, and pictures of memory. Still, from a counterpoint of view, it is the tangible materiality and transformations of objects that can bring to light the social context they are placed in. Malhotra investigates objects in three dimensions, firstly, as established in time and their journeys in time; secondly, in their place and shifting geographical context; and lastly, through the context of memory, which often transcends the previous two. These together integrate an alternative retelling of the 1947 mass exodus.
Yakin Ajay Kinger is currently a student of the Master’s in Architectural History and Theory program at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. He works on theorising architecture and material culture. His current research focuses on decoding the amnesia and resurgence of a medieval garden in India. His work has been published across various platforms.
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