'Unpartitioned Time' book review: History as Eulogy
This is a eulogy taken to an illogical extreme with a beautiful effect. It all begins with the death of Sardar Jitinder Singh Rajkotia, in his 80s: effete, handsome and given to lazing in bed. In musing about his life and death, his daughter the author, takes a deep dive into his life, her own grief of also losing a husband before, the Partition and its aftermath and what it means to be Sikh in India. In Unpartitioned Time: A Daughter’s Story, Malavika Rajkotia chronicles a gritty, painful yet sublime era and the many secrets it hides in its folds.
Overwhelmingly, this is a book of untold histories. There is history as history is taught in schools and colleges: of kings and statecraft, of the larger issues, of war, of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s greatness and the subsequent humiliation and murder of his sons. Then there’s the history of Sikhism, of the 10 gurus and the most holy places in the faith. Partition is a huge part of the story for this is the memory of the great betrayal, as remembered truths and incidents.
The rest are personal histories: the tracing of an ancestor as a stranger until his descendent suddenly enters the inner world of the book as a great-grandparent; the imaginings of the mother-in-law’s mother as a young girl; and in short sketches, wrapping up the worst and the best incidents in a series of lives; all relatives. Still, the author returns to where she began, the story of her father and his propensity to laze.
The parts about him are her forte in this memorial. Here she is tender, witty, perplexed and anguished in love. It is brave of her to touch upon her father’s visit to the Ranchi Asylum and to mention how he spoke of the Russians even a year before he died. But mostly it is remembering him with a sense of profound loss and celebrating his life even when it does not make perfect sense to her.
Dazzling as the various strands are, they all intertwine in bewildering clumps. There is no progression or order in the text, maybe by design. Slivers of memory are presented as they occur, without context; some, in chapters less than a page. For history of a place or a ruler that the reader has no prior information about, there is awareness that this not reliable, is merely the author’s hearsay, insufficient research or simply one-sided.
Still, as a memoir it has much to offer. The image of the Muslims of her grandfather’s village in Pakistan lining up to say goodbye with rotis for him is a rare gem. And this book abounds with such memories.
Unpartitioned Time
By: Malavika Rajkotia
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Pages: 275
Price: Rs 599