Remembering to forget
In this exclusive first extract from her new book on the inheritance of Partition, recounts an interview that encapsulates the process of wilful forgetting
The Hindi writer Krishna Sobti, born in Gujrat, present-day Pakistan, had once said that Partition was difficult to forget but dangerous to remember. On the fragile boundary of remembering and forgetting can be found the stories of Partition. In September 2018, while on field research in Jammu, I record an interview which for me now encapsulates the process of wilful forgetting. One evening, Sumedha Mahajan – who has helped set up this interview – and I are invited to tea by the family of a gentleman who had migrated in November 1947 from Mirpur district in what is now Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Sumedha’s grandparents too are from Mirpur, as also distant acquaintances of this family. We are taken to a brightly painted room, where a young man gives us some background information about his father, whom we will soon meet.
Sumedha exchanges pleasantries about her family, and I talk about the work I will be doing in Jammu. After we finish our tea, he leads us to an inner room, where an elderly, balding man is sitting on the bed. Behind him, on the ochre yellow wall, is a calendar featuring Hindu gods. As he shifts around to get more comfortable, I get a fleeting glimpse of some Urdu text tattooed on his right forearm and the symbol of Om on his outer palm, between the thumb and forefinger.
Everyone around us is smiling, his family is delighted that a scholar has come to speak about his experiences of the journey from Mirpur to Jammu. He must have conceded as well, since he greets us when we enter the room, but then
he retreats into silence. His eyes are wide open, but they are fixed on the ground, staring at nothing and no one... clearing my throat, I ask about where he was born and when. He answers each question, but his gaze never meets mine.
“And what was it like?” I ask him. “Mirpur? Bohot badiya, it was good. It was a place where everyone was happy until they weren’t. It was a good place,” he replies.
“Do you remember it?” He nods. “Watan toh watan hota hai, it’s my birthplace after all.”
“What do you remember about it?” “Well, it is in Pakistan now, drowning under the water of the Mangla dam, but when the water level recedes, I have heard that our old city rises to the top.” This is the longest sentence he has spoken, and his arms limply create a bridge, a dam, before us. Then, just as quickly, he brings them down and folds them back in his lap.
His family members remind him of the anecdotes he has told over the years. Everyone starts talking at once, remembering bits of memory, fragments of family lore... Son, daughter-in-law, other family members are sitting around us, even the children are playing with their toys, peeking in from behind curtains...
They tell us about how his mother’s brother-in-law couldn’t walk and remained locked inside a room when the family left in November 1947; they couldn’t go back for him. They tell us how his sister-in-law’s neck was hacked with an axe, a kulhari.
They speak of the Alibeg concentration camp, where his friends were held, and how young girls of the family were picked up and carried away by people known as Kabailis. They cradle their arms before their bodies as they tell us about a fourteen-day-old baby wrapped in a shawl and brought to India over a journey of three days with nothing to eat or drink. After a while, there is only noise; there are too many voices but not the one that truly matters. Seated on the bed, the elderly gentleman is swaying very softly from front to back, his bulging eyes still fixed on the ground.
The family members coax him to remember, but he doesn’t. They speak louder, for he cannot hear well. I look at Sumedha and breathe in of the Metro stations are in stark contrast to the streets of Delhi. They are sanitised, almost hospital- like, with a silent hum, subdued announcements, vast spaces, and people in orderly queues.
Sadana speaks to Dunu Roy, head of NGO Hazards Centre, who remarks on the spatial struggle in the city. A peculiar inversion of the reality of city life, the Metro is clean and green but the city bus is dirty diesel. The city is being shaped in the image of the few and those it deems dirty are being moved off the map. Over a thousand families were displaced due to the Metro, perhaps more.
Metronama also takes a broader look at the architecture of Delhi and it is a treat to sharply. I don’t know what to note down any more...
My heart is breaking with guilt for what I can only assume is going through his mind. He doesn’t divulge any sadness, but he doesn’t discount it either.
Over the voices of the others, his son finally says, “Mirpur di koi gall sunao na, tell us something about your home.” He speaks in Pothwari, which has all but disappeared from modern conversation. It sounds like Punjabi, and I can catch some words, but it is much brisker, and his intonations make the language sound more musical than when I have heard it before.
His wife leans in closer to her father-inlaw and repeats, to make sure he can hear, “Mirpur di gall?” The gentleman shakes his head from left to right and returns his empty gaze to the ground. “Koi changi si gall? Something good, a good memory. Achchi yaadaan vi sunao,” she prompts.
“Koi takki di gall, kedi takki thi ghar de kol, tell us about a street close to your home,” his son says again. But his father says nothing about Mirpur. He just keeps swaying softly from front to back, repeating, “Everything was very good, people were happy with one another. Sab kuch theek tha.”
There are no other words he offers, for sometimes forgetting is as important as remembering.
*
The memory of Partition is complex by all accounts – studied seven decades on, it is a canvas left with many blank spaces. Purposefully forgetting to remember, consciously remembering to forget. Sometimes “cannot remember” can also mean “I don’t want to remember”. And in returning to the notion of transference, I deduce that no matter how nuanced a memory we may collect from another, no matter how close it may feel to us... it will never truly be ours, for we have not experienced it.
In this sense, the conversations in this chapter are born from the understanding that received memory of Partition is distinct from eyewitness recall, because it will always be mediated by unavoidable distance. Those who preserve the memories of their ancestors and others are not trying to emulate any feeling, but to create new engagements with the same memory...
Every generation feels differently, and within that generation there will be further distinctions among groups. The purpose of conversations with subsequent generations on the memory of Partition – its remembering and forgetting – is purely to understand how memory is disseminated, discovered and reclaimed. read AG Krishna Menon’s criticism on conservation as an attempt to beautify. He vehemently opposes the New Delhi Municipal Corporation’s plans to change the iconic pillars at Connaught Place from sandstone to marble, to gentrify Gole Market with a glass dome and a museum. He argues that these changes are more for outsiders than those who come to work in the market. Among the many questions Sadana asks within the book, there is none as crucial as, “Whose Delhi is it? And exactly which parts of the city does the Metro serve?”
Sadana’s meeting with architect Preeti Bahadur, whose firm designed one of the early Metro stations, is of particular interest. Bahadur speaks of the complicated tendering process involved in the design and construction of the stations. She speaks of international designs that envision Metro stations with motifs of peacocks, diamonds, and temples; of the symbolism that is clichéd when it comes to representing India and the gap between those designs and Indian realities.
While these macro arguments frame a large part of the book, Sadana also dives into the lives of city-dwellers. She offers snapshots of areas such as Seelampur, where residents just want to be left alone by the government, and of the role of the Metro in urban imaginations, with people imagining the narratives of fellow travellers. She delves into accounts of navigating the personal and political in the women’s coaches, and chronicles stories of the Metro bringing lovers together and helping them escape scrutiny.
Sardana also chronicles the sheer effort of will that was required to bring the project into existence. It is an extremely detailed look at the nature of the complicated partnerships between government bodies and the people, and the dedication of several government agencies.
Metronama looks at mobility as an experience rather than a process, even as it provides a moving portrait of Delhi life. Here, as the Metro runs in an infinite loop, its windows turn into frames, capturing chapters of individual lives. Sadana shows us that the Metro isn’t just its structures or its technology. It is more than the sum of the experiences of the people travelling in it; a part of the city and yet distinct; it is its own medium and its own message.