AIR MILES
Aanchal Malhotra is an oral historian and author. She is the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory, a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. Malhotra talks to Business Traveller India about her love for literature.
When did your aair with the literary word begin?
I am lucky to be born into a family of booksellers, so I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember. Words have always meant something; books have always been sacred, even in my childhood. I began writing, however, only in 2013.
What inspired you to work on a book?
Being from the subcontinent, one can never truly divorce oneself from the partition, but growing up, I never really had an interest in it, despite all four of my grandparents being able to trace their histories to what became Pakistan. It was only when I became an adult and had intimate encounters with stories from across the border, that the need to translate them into a generational history became important. People’s personal stories of migration — o en overlooked as secondary to facts and gures — became my subject matter and led to the writing of a book.
Do you personally like to travel domestically or internationally?
I travel both circuits, o en for work or
eld research. Since the beginning of this year, I have travelled to Rajasthan for the wonderful Jaipur Literature Festival, to Mumbai for a friend’s wedding, and, I am due to make a long trip to the US and UK on a book tour.
Do you like to read on the plane? What kinds of books interest you while travelling?
I almost always carry a book on ights, usually whatever I am reading at the moment, unless it’s too heavy to lug around! At the moment, it is Julie Otsuka’s ‘ e Buddha in the Attic’.
When can we see your next published book?
I am working on something that should be published in 2021.