Interview: Aanchal Malhotra, author, In the Language of Remembering

Ashis Nandy had written in the foreword of a book of Partition stories several years ago that “An unexamined past has to be lived out over succeeding generations”. “I don’t know if there’s a pattern to it but they are mostly families that are immigrant families overseas”, says Malhotra. “Two siblings I spoke to, Chhaya and Bharat, didn’t know anything about where their last name was from, and I remember being on a video call with them and showing them this glossary of Punjabi chiefs and tribes, and we found everything, where they were from…it was very surreal to I suppose give someone their history on a video call”, she says. “One of the things you can do with a book like this is show people the multiplicity of versions of memory that begin from the same event”, says Malhotra.