Shame and I are well-acquainted. I met with Shame the day I was born, after experiencing the ambivalent, subtle, and unspoken disappointment of being the first grandchild, albeit one with my genitals. The duality of joy and shame is another friend of mine. It’s possible I met with Shame even before I was born, in the womb of my mother, who’s body has also held on to generations of Shame.
The Shame that we all know as South Asian women and femmes, the shame of being born with a vagina, and the shame of just not being good enough.
I teared up while watching the newest episode of Ms. Marvel last night, Episode five, Time and Time Again. Interestingly, the title of the episode itself plucked at my heartstrings — as someone with their moon in Cancer, the slightest hint of nostalgic themes and elements moves me. The first thirty seconds caused me to sob hysterically, in which we’re shown clips of the day after Partition, and the harrowing, haunting and horrific realization that we had been colonized for two hundred years.
Two centuries of violence, abuse, bullying, misogyny, control, sexual assault, murder, and painful disrespect was imposed on us by the British.
My tears quickly transformed after a minute into the show itself. Set in 1942, a South Asian Muslim woman is seen running — barefoot nonetheless (I have plantar fasciitis in one foot because of the crappy shoes I’ve worn all my life, I’m sorry ancestors!) — while a British officer runs after her, threatening to shoot her. Eventually, she turns around and throws a knife into his chest, killing him.
Now this, I resonate with. Not only did I feel the affects and ancestral trauma of Partition course through my body this entire episode (written by Fatimah Asghar, a poet who often explores themes of Partition in their work), but also the desire to remain alive.
The desire to remain alive, to survive, is embedded in my genealogy. It is ingrained in me, starting from my toes to the tips of my hair. Haider. Lion. Braveheart. My father almost died from a brain tumour in 2003, when I was nine years old. But he did not. We are not meant to die. We are meant to live as long as our ancestors did, and thrive. Our ancestors who often lived to see a century’s worth of life.
The rest of the episode reflect what perhaps many of our grandparents experienced, especially those who are labelled as Muhajirs, and having been dealing with the brunt of that label for decades. The nation states of Pakistan and India are only 75 years old, younger than my remaining grandparents on this Earth.
My Nani is the only family member who directly carries the trauma of Partition migration, and I saw her in the young girl, Sana, who appears confused and disassociated, amidst the plethora of fearful, frazzled, and frantic folks trying to squeeze onto the trains.
The trains. Not everyone took trains, often many would go by foot, to Pakistan, or if they were wealthy enough, then many travelled by air too.
Whenever I see references of the trains during Partition era, and the fact that many would subsequently be killed on those trains after — I think about the very recent reality faced by many Afghans, except rather than a train, they were planes.
Is there any difference between then and now, apart from modernity and industrialization? Has the world really “advanced” as much as neoliberals will try to convince us it has? Or have we (a small minority with privilege) been distracted, by luxury and a more convenient, capitalistic life?
Partition may have been the largest mass migration of the twentieth century, but those memories live on, and continue to reproduce in other ways.
Don’t treat me, or others, the way the British treated us. The way they bullied us, for centuries. The way they starved us, and viewed us as primitive and backwards, unworthy of their respect, or even basic nourishment. The way they made us hate each other, and this deep-seated, festering hatred, continues on for another century — except this time, it’s between us — as Desis.
But we don’t hate the British, right? We love London <3 we love shopping there and going to Harrods if we’re rich, pretending assimilation, visiting family, or, we you forced to immigrate there because otherwise you would have died. I sit in Canada as I type this. Do you think I am genuinely joyous to be here, that I love this place, that I consider it my home? Of course not. I feel as if I’m in purgatory.
Living in Dubai felt somewhat closer to home than here does. But people like me don’t belong in their homes. I don’t belong in Pakistan, the place I grew up for eighteen years of my life, where I have a tree named after me, where almost all of my family is — because you want to treat me the way the British treated us.
Punishment, particularly capital punishment, became first “normalized” in Britain by the 10th century AD. You want to punish me. You want to punish us. But who did we learn this culture of shame and punishment from? Why don’t we question it enough?
Being hyper empathetic is complex. On the one hand, I value that I can empathize with and forgive others easily. On the other, I can still be abusive and self-serving. Cultivating balance has been the overarching theme of my life. But I refuse to give in to hatred, because I’ve been there. It’s far easier for me to be hateful, bitter, and angry — but it is exhausting, and it eats away at my days and heart.
My heart is so precious, and it needs to be taken care of. All of ours do, literally, since South Asians are 40% more likely to die from heart disease than anyone else. Anger, punishment, resent, rage, bitterness and punishment aren’t good for us (although rage I would argue, serves a purpose and one can have a healthy relationship with it). We need to move past our Hegelian relationship with the British. We are community-oriented folk, unlike the highly individualistic West.
So let’s focus on that. And let’s heal our collective and individual shame, together.
Partition Reading List:
Scholarly:
The Other Side of Silence, Urvashi Butalia.
Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, Ritu Menon & Kamla Bhasin
The Great Partition: The Making of India & Pakistan, Yasmin Khan
Literature:
Train to Pakistan, Khushwant Singh
Mottled Dawn (and famously, Toba Tek Singh), Saadat Hasan Manto
Cracking India, Bapsi Sidhwa
The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh
Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai (this one is my personal favourite xoxo).