It is an alternative history of the Partition - the first and only one told through material memory that makes the event tangible even seven decades later. Written as a crossover between history and anthropology, Remnants of a Separation is the product of years of passionate research. A refugee certificate created in Calcutta evokes in a daughter the feelings of displacement her father had experienced upon leaving Mymensingh zila, now in Bangladesh. A notebook of poems, brought from Lahore to Kalyan, shows one woman's determination to pursue the written word despite the turmoil around her. A string of pearls gifted by a maharaja, carried from Dalhousie to Lahore, reveals the grandeur of a life that once was. The author of Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory, Aanchal takes notes meticulously. They now speak of their owner's pasts as they emerge as testaments to the struggle, sacrifice, pain and belonging at an unparalleled moment in history. These belongings absorbed the memory of a time and place, remaining latent and undisturbed for generations. Aanchal Malhotra's Remnants of a Separation is one such book that captures the stories of families who were a part of biggest human migration the world has ever seen, the partition of Indian subcontinent, now known as India and Pakistan. oral historian Aanchal Malhotra too had thought little about the Partition. Remnants of a Separation is a unique attempt to revisit the Partition through objects that refugees carried with them across the border. Remnants of a separation : a history of the partition through material memory.
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