From Quetta to Delhi: A Partition Story

Memories Revived Through Music 

Release of the book by Reena Nanda (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2018)

 

Speakers: Narayani Gupta, historian; and Parvati Sharma, novelist and short story writer

 

Followed by a Concert

By Pamela Singh, Punjabi singer and actor with Neelam Mansingh’s The Company, Chandigarh

 

The partition of the Punjab in 1947 was not just the loss of a physical space but of the culture and ethos it embodied. Multilingual with multiple identities, it was a pluralist culture in which bhajans, shabads, sufi kafis and qawwalis were equally popular with people of all religions. There was an invisible cost of Partition besides the loss of life and property. It was the destruction of the psychic equilibrium of the displaced population, the ‘refugees’. This is the story of one such woman, Shakunt Nanda, who coped with mental distress by escaping into memories of the part, mourning the loss of the old Punjabiyat, remembering the old songs which will be presented by Pamela Singh