this is the first collage in the new series inspired by my filmwork on the partition of india and by the idea of bearing witness as a dynamic act. that’s my maternal grandfather in the foreground. he went to aligarh university (in uttar pradesh, india). he spoke fluent urdu, english and sanskrit. he was a lawyer, an excellent tennis player and a soccer referee. altho he and his family survived partition, he died soon after moving to pakistan. maybe he couldn’t recover from the trauma and dislocation. i never knew him. i’ve seated him in front of delhi gate in lahore, which is one of the doorways to the walled city. it’s 1946. my grandfather is my connection to the turbulent history of the indian subcontinent. what he witnessed binds us together. agha shahid ali talks about this inextricable bond in his poem “snowmen.” his ancestors came from the himalayas.
“This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice.”
