The Story of 'others'

Human conflicts like war, migration and displacement bring out extremes in human behaviour. Paradoxically, they have also helped in the establishment of new societies and rebuilding and rearranging existing ones.

These conflicted and often untold human emotions and expression associated with displacement is intriguing when juxtaposed on time and geography. This project titled, The Story of ‘Others’, explores and interprets the myriad emotions and expressions associated with India’s relationship with its immediate neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We share close yet strained political, cultural and religious affiliations. A long history of conflict, displacement and cross border migration, makes the region inharmonious, to say the least. Growing up in India, I have heard and read about stories related to the partition of India both on its western and eastern borders. I heard them from people I know, from strangers, from people in power and from various media channels. Those have had an impression on me as with others. Stories of conflict and persecution, displacement, lost identities, material loss, large scale migration, and a constantly tense relation hanging by the thread. Stories that are detached from my sensibilities of seeing and feeling everyone as equals. Almost everyone in India knows and talk about the horrors of those years. But often opinions are formed based on a commonly agreeable narrative and gets built-up to such an extent that the other side of the story remains only as the “Others”. These conflicting emotions and viewpoints influenced by history, society and politics urged me on with documenting these stories.

It started in Paris. As I used to walk back home on the streets, or in the subways, I passed by the “Others” and found them “looking” at me. I did too. In anticipation. In the hope of striking a conversation. There were times when brief conversations took place, some without any words. In the initial days of being in Paris, I had these ‘dialogues’ with many restaurant and shop owners where I frequent. I needed to meet more people to find more stories. Finally, I was able to contact a Pakistani family in Paris and an Indian family in Kolkata. This project is my attempt to tell the stories of these two families in contrasting situations and their associated expressions. On one hand, is a young and progressive Pakistani family who migrated to Paris three years ago. I spent a lot of time with them, in their home, in their environment, their place of work, doing day to day activities. With hopes and aspirations of a better future, they find themselves in an alien culture, trying to stay rooted to their own way of life. On the other is the story of three sisters from India who were forced to migrate from Bangladesh in 1971 during the Bangladesh war of independence. The scars of conflict, material loss, human tragedy and forced migration deep within their psyche, is evident in their expressions, environment and material memories. Both display contrasting expressions, body language, surroundings, memories of past and present, and reactions to migration. Their presence and connection with respect to their surroundings and my close association allowed me to explore and represent their “space”. I tried to capture a moment, a movement, to tell a story, to see their world as it reveals its reality through a montage of expressions, in the backdrop of history, society and time. And in its allure and internal conflicts, these stories try to provoke thought on key issues of migration through a mix of nostalgia and modernism, in a move towards demystifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas.

Flipbook Link: https://www.paperturn-view.com/?pid=ODU85349&v=3.1