Remnants of a Separation

(I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book for For The Love of Fictional Worlds)Disclaimer: A Huge Thanks to Harper Collins India for providing a review copy of this wonderful book. But the thought, opinions and feelings expressed in the review are entirely my own!To say that I am writing a review for this book would be sacrilegious – not only is this book filled with emotions of real human beings; but it is also a reflection of a time that I consider to be one of the defining moments for both India and Pakistan’s history!It was never an easy time learning about this bloody time in my country’s history – and it became all the more difficult reading this book; for I had lost my Grandfather two years back; a man who became the head of his family just before Independence and who has been a source of pride and inspiration for me.Reading these memories, I understood now (like I hadn’t understood before) how difficult it would have been for my Grandpa to share his experience – and he only shared it once. A time that I cherish because it was his and mine; a time that I understood how far along he had come, not only him but how far along he had bought his family.This is an emotional book to read – the memories tell me, as a young Indian, how important it is to hold on to my history, to my country’s struggles; to my country’s struggle for the future it so desperately needs.

this has been my one of the best read so far. plus paper quality is very good. go for it

Remnants of a Separation….by Aanchal Malhotra.I began reading this book somewhere around the mid of April. The book is all of 386 pages and my target was to complete it by the last Sunday of April which was the Swapbook meet day where the subject for discussion was books based on Memoirs or Memories. I finally completed the book in the last week of May. It’s not an easy task completing the book considering its sheer volume. By volume I do not mean the number of pages but the mass of emotions it contains. Just reading the introduction, which is thirty five pages, left me in tears and it took me a good two days to return to the book. A few weeks back someone asked me on faceboook “Just how much of literature on partition is enough to be read?” My answer was it can never be enough. And Remnants of a Separation just reiterates my belief. It’s a wound, the scars of which we as a nation have collectively inherited. My first impressions about the partition and the tragic human exodus came from watching Attenborough’s Gandhi which was telecast on Doordarshan every 15th August, 2nd October and the 26th of January. The gravity of the tragedy struck home in a small measure only when I read the Freedom at Midnight, Train to Pakistan and Ice Candy Man. It was not until I read the accounts of these survivors in this book that I fully understood what it meant to be left homeless. My father had a transferable job and we shifted to a new city and a new house every two or three years at the most, so to me that feeling of uprootment was not new. I always felt so what they just had to pack their samaan and move to India but what it never dawned was that they had to leave behind everything, their homes, their friends, their relationships and most importantly their lives. From comforts to uncertainty and at times penury, how difficult it would have been for those self respecting people. The most endearing thing about this book is that no where do the survivors speak ill of any community, neither do they show any bitterness towards them. The Stone Plaque of Mian Faiz Rabbani and The Pearls of Azra Haq are my favourite chapters from the book. Mian Faiz Rabbani’s account is heartwarming. Its Nazeer Adhami’s words that leave a lasting impression ‘Bhala koi apne mulk ki mitti se kabhi alag ho sakta hai?’This book must have been a difficult journey for the author as well, for making the seniors remember their past which is scarred and still painful must have taken a toll on her emotionally and then retaining it and reproducing it must have been so thoroughly exhausting. Thank you Aanchal for writing what you wrote.Remnants of a Separation is a book that should be included in the curriculum so as to enable the young to know the price our previous generation paid for gaining independence. Even after seven decades of Independence we as a nation are still vulnerable and victim to divisive politics. It’s time we learn from the remnants of this past and wisen up.(On a lighter note Remnants of a Separation has changed my perceptions to all the old material things gather over a period. This time when I opened my mom’s almirah to check on the old sarees I viewed it with a different perspective and so was it when I checked out the old LP records that my father has still preserved. Now I understand just why my Daadi was upset when we sold off our family home. Before my Mom or Chachi could reach to help my Daadi clear the house, my uncle had promptly got in a man and sold off the old things labelled as ‘Kabaad’. Today I realize it was not Kabaad but held an ocean of emotions for my Daadi.)

The book opens with the most beautiful dedication by the author that reads as follows:For her, who taught me the importance of one's soilandFor him, who tried so hard to forget it.These two lines seem to envelop within them all the emotions that the men, women, and children, impacted by the partition of India into two separate countries, must have experienced.During her research, the author - Aanchal Malhotra - discovered that memory, on its own, may be unreliable, but objects associated with that time have the ability to reconnect us with lost memories and help us reconstruct them.In Remnants of a Separation, Malhotra has explored the history of the partition through material memory.After an extensive introduction on how the project came to be and the many discoveries she made along the way, she retraces the lives of 19 families from both sides of the border (including West and East Pakistan-now Bangladesh) who survived the partition, and now hold their deepest, darkest memories in the objects they carried across with them as well as those they left behind.Each of these 19 stories are heartbreaking as much are they are powerful and inspiring. Reading them left me overwhelmed with emotions so intense that it surprised me.It's been a few days now since I finished reading the book but I can't seem to stop thinking about the people whose stories are written between the pages.If there is book on History that you must read, it should be this, for not only is it unusual, and brilliantly so, but it tells you history like you've never read before.

All the stories in this book are amazing. You can go back to the past while reading the book

This book is really a must read. I felt like being taken back to time. It does made the heart ache at times yet it's a beautiful experience to go through .