remnants of a separation by aanchal malhotra

Here, the emergence of a new self often temporally forgets the older self, and what is not often recollected becomes a story. The memoir not only delves outwards but puts into words the internal journeys of the immigrants, as in the case of Prabhjot Kaur.

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.

It highlights the imperial influences involved in the making of the social fabric of the Indian society in the pre-partition era. 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. Tapping into the people's lives before the partition, Malhotra discusses ideas of community, family, and the individual. 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. 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. In this sense, objects have been repurposed as tools to chronicle the individual perspectives of the mass exodus. Malhotra hints at the amnesia surrounding some of these objects and equates it to the memories of the event. 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. If we turn attention to the title, here, the remnants have been revisited as sites of memory, not as sites of history. This allows varied casts and classes to express their experiences. The selection is wide-ranging, from jewellery to kitchenware, and from a collection of poems to the stone plaque of a house. The book compiles the author's interpretation, interviews, and images of the nineteen objects selected for narration. The methodology employed is a non-linear one, cutting across time and geographic regions. 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. 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. 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.

Remnants of a separation by aanchal malhotra