Intezar

The Indo-Pak partition of 1947 displaced many families, leaving them tortured, traumatised and impacted for life. The generation who experienced migration first hand, buried multiple secrets in their heavy hearts. Some are still guarding those secrets; some took them to grave while a few chose to pen them down. My work narrates one such secret story divulged through a letter. A letter my grandfather wrote to his lost Parents but never posted. He lost his mother, to the parttion and then later lost his father, to enmity. My work elucidates his pain, his Intezar (waiting) and the feelings of loss, confinement and longing he suffered. Migration led him to live his entire life in transit waiting for his loved ones who went away one after another. My ancestral home was the site where my grandfather enclosed himself for a lifetime awaiting his parents. He sat by the doorway –in anticipation...

I am preserving the emotional landscape of my ancestral home through replicating the essence; feeling my grandfather’s presence; honouring his pain, his memory, his words. – Attempting to give a visual form to his narrative through building miniatures employing the language of textiles. The entire work can be detached to make stand-alone pieces and reassembled to evoke the feeling of Intezar.