At the time of the Paris Book Festival which is currently taking place and where Indian literature is the guest of honor, meeting with Aanchal Malhotra, Indian artist and historian, specialist in memory. She co-founded the Museum of Material Memory, a site that lists collectibles and accounts of witnesses to the history of the Indian subcontinent. She now lives in New Delhi. “Remains of a separation” is his first work.
Translated from English (India) by Camille Cloarec, the book was published by Héloïse d’Ormesson.
“An inventory for memorial
A bracelet in the shape of a peacock, a simple knife, a book of poems, pearls offered to a young Muslim woman by a maharaja… So many memories, fragments of destiny of a world about to be engulfed with its last living witnesses. Because seventy years after the partition of India and Pakistan, what traces remain of the former reunified country?
To resuscitate this culture, Aanchal Malhotra focuses on the objects that accompanied this people (his great-grandparents, in particular) during the exodus, and which are now loaded with symbols. Through these legacies, the history of the different Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities that make up the country is told.
Thanks to a succession of short chapters devoted to each of these objects, Aanchal Malhotra tends to restore the memory of a vanished country.” (Presentation of Héloïse d’Ormesson editions).