Esha

“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.”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

“Memorialization is not a passive practice but an active conversation.”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

“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.”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

“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.”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory