decolonising partition (ongoing)

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These poems are part of an ongoing series of poems I’m writing about decolonising and dissecting partition. Each poem is a response to an excerpt from the book, Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland by Saaz Aggarwal. A lot of discourse and writing around partition seldom includes Sindh, a homeland for Sindhis of different religions before they were uprooted when partition ensued. Sindh is a province that didn’t get split between what is now India & Pakistan. It is just in Pakistan, leaving many no longer with a place to call home or family and friends they could see again if they fled. As I read the book with a decolonial lens, I am prompted to dissect the whiteness so seeped into our thinking, to write about colonialism and partition as it was, not a whitewashed version of history, to frame and hold onto memories left behind, decipher memories that could have been, and to immortalise history that has been neglected through poetry.

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Background image credit: snippet from book cover by Veda Aggarwal