Remnants Of Partition Quotes

Memory dilutes, but the object remains unaltered.

We should have realized it sooner, at least my father should have, that there was no coming back. Not in September when the riots died down, not in October when the subcontinent still lay in shock, not even in November as he had hoped and promised us. Lahore was now lost forever

Memorialization is not a passive practice but an active conversation.

Partition memory is particularly pliable. Within it, the act of forgetting, either inevitably or purposefully, seems to play as much a part as remembering itself.

Migration is often accompanied by a feeling of unavoidable disorientation, and the circumstances of 1947 would have pronounced this feeling. In most cases, it would have created an involuntary distance between where one was born before the Partition and where one moved to after it, stretching out their identity sparsely over the expanse of this distance. As a result, somewhere in between the original city of their birth and the adopted city of residence, would lay their essence – strangely malleable.

A transference of memory was occurring as she, the vessel, the source, wrung every small, muffled detail into me, the depository. And once it began, it was difficult to interrupt or stop

If I considered the Partition an archeological site, and the many experiences of those who witnessed it as the site’s structural sedimentation, then the deeper I excavated, the more I found, and that too in innumerable renditions.

The notion that where one is from can be understood using what remains of that place opens up a highly sensitive and rich terrain that can help unpack belonging, especially if that place has now been rendered inaccessible by national borders.

We all know how unreliable memory can be, how transient reminiscences are, and how inaccessible the past will always remain. Experiences can never be duplicated or revived...by those who took no part in the struggle. Herein lies the beauty and power of conflict-related objects, some of which withstand the ravages of time in a way that memories do not.

Every time the train stopped at a station, we would all hold our breath, making sure not a single sound drifted out of the closed windows. We were hungry and our throats parched. From inside the train we heard voices travelling up and down the platform, saying, “Hindu paani,” and, from the other side, “Muslim paani.” Apart from land and population, even the water had now been divided

even trees bear allegiance to their soil, you see. Just like people,’ she told me wisely. ‘It is difficult to uproot them and place them where they don’t belong.

But this silence, though they attempt to conceal it, is at times accompanied by unexpected, intangible mementos married to the memories of Partition.

The memory buried within 'things' sometimes is greater than what we are able to recollect as the years pass.

As if rediscovering herself through her words, her forefinger drew invisible lines on the pages she had blackened so many years ago. Her lips moved in a soft, inaudible babble and her head nodded from time to time, as if some words still held truth. Her eyes were glued to the pages and she appeared completely removed and unaltered by the movement in the room around her. Was this what it felt like to slip back into your former selves, I wondered. The keepers of journals and notebooks live forever in duality, inventing and reinventing realities. They tread the fine line between the world in their mind and the world on their page and hope that which they pour out remains the truest form of life.

How does a parent live with the fear of having to cremate his or her own child? Or, worse, of never seeing them again – of forever being in limbo. There is no easy way to confront that sort of grief, and so we wait. Because waiting is a painful comfort that demands no acceptance of any fact or future but allows us to retain even the smallest possibility of hope.

As I focused the lens on her earrings, I thought about her husband. I imagined him shuffling through the house before he left, looking only for those things that were precious to his wife: her sari, her jewellery, things that would make her happy, things that would remind her of their Karachi. These belongings he carried, perhaps concealed within his luggage so that the authorities would not take them away.

I thought of the pride their granddaughter felt every time she wore the dupatta that now belonged to her. I thought of how objects that were once bought for their utility – a sari, for instance – acquired a new and alien preciousness as their context and environment changed. How much care she would likely put into draping it on herself, how delicately she would fold and store it in layers of newspaper with the hope that this precious inheritance from her grandmother would never fray, never weather. How lovely it was that parts of Sindh still lived with her.