Reminders of the Partition

Objects have memories and Delhi's Partition Museum taps into them

- Rakhi Bose

IN continuum physics, there is a category of materials called “materials with memory”. These materials often “remember” their past, which influences their present. Just like these materials with memory, the kyon (brass alloy) bowls of Ashok Talwar have their own memories. They remind you of a time when India and Pakistan were undivided, a time when kyon bowls from West Pakistani households like Talwar’s were regularly sent to the polishers for kadi (polishing), in order to keep them shiny and in shape. They also remind you of the violence and sorrow of the Partition and the Talwar’s subsequent journey to the newly formed India, in the trunks packed by his family as they hurriedly left their ancestral home.

Today, the bowl sits inside a glass case inside the Partition Museum in New Delhi, a repository of heirloom objects that were once owned by Partition survivors and passed down generationally, just like the memories of the survivors that continue to live on in the minds of their kin.

In her seminal essay Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy, Marianne Hirsch—the academic author and daughter of holocaust survivors—introduced the concept of “post memory”. Memories that, like objects, are passed on generationally. Founded by Kishwar Desai, the Partition Museum too is a work of post memory. It tries to tap into the memories of survivors through their possessions in an effort to convert personal memories into collective “post-memory”.