Graphic Pains, Persecuted Memories- Dismantling the Narrative Spaces Within Selected Texts from This Side, That Side

Abstract

This paper is a critical inquiry into selected narratives from the partition anthology This Side, That Side edited by Vishwajyoti Ghosh - namely ‘Border’ by Kaiser Haq and Hemant Puri, ‘Which Side?’ by Ravish Kumar, Shveta Sarda and Ikroop Sandhu, ‘A Letter from India’ by Mahmood Farooqui and Fariha Rahman, and ‘Know Directions Home?’ By Nina Sabnani- probing into the trauma, the memory of pain, and the loss incurred from partition. Brendan O’Leary in his essay Analysing partition: Definition, classification and explanation defines partition as ‘the division of an entity into parts.’ For a nation like India, which is a conglomeration of cultures, confluences, identities, and existences, the period of partition was an incursion of its very soul, its existence- ‘entity’ as O’Leary calls it. Partition has perhaps been the most tragic saga in the recorded annals of history of the nation that is India and her neighbors as the tragedy that this period ushered in, infected millions of lives across the landscape- physically and psychologically. Partition literature is a testimony to those times, those appalling moments and memories that has forever tarnished the spatial historiography of the subcontinent. This Side, That Side is an exemplary addition to the already rich collection of partition literature. An anthology of graphic narratives ‘restorying partition’, the collection opens new dimensions and questionnaire on studying and analysing partition literature. For one, the anthology chronicles the trauma of partition in a graphic format- a form very novel and recent in Indian literature and its corresponding academic intrigues. The visual narrative space coalesces the tragedy and its associated parameters in a format, which owing to its presentation heightens the reader experience. The paper looks to deconstruct the semantic and semiotic spaces within the narratives, perceive the silences within the texts and dismantle the memorial spaces within the narrative constructs thereby analysing the atypical format which re-creates partition.