Memories of mayhem

A new museum in Old Delhi is preserving partition memories and sparking conversations

- REYA MEHROTRA

Trains and platforms over-loaded with desperate passengers who, in search of a new home, have left behind their homes and loved ones. The horrors of the partition have them displaced and a little dead inside. Some walk over piles of bodies, while some painfully leave their people behind—often not willing to search for them for fear of finding them in traumatising conditions.

Deepa Mehta’s Earth, Govind Nihalani’s Tamas and Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s Pinjar capture the pain of partition in cinema, as effectively as Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories and Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence do in literature.

One of the largest mass migrations in human history, partition torments the survivors even now. But when it comes to memorialising the event physically, and not just in the pop culture space, there still remains a certain void. Offering a vision to fill it is author Kishwar Desai, who had set up a partition museum in Amritsar in 2017 through The Arts and Culture Heritage Trust.