Refugees in Their Own Country distills the immense trauma of Partition into seventy-five short, illustrated verses — one for each year since 1947. What makes the collection remarkable is the distance of its author from the event itself. Writing as a third-generation descendant of refugees, Sunayna Pal inhabits the inherited pain of displacement with startling immediacy.
The poems are compact, pared-down, and visual — each a snapshot of memory and loss. Using simple English, they reach readers of all ages while evoking powerful emotional and historical layers. Pal writes of ordinary objects — sand, bricks, doors, toys, papads — yet through them captures a civilization’s unmaking. Her voice is not that of witness but of listener, piecing together fragments from grandparents and survivors, and transforming them into accessible, moving verse.
There is deep empathy in these pages, but also clarity. The poet does not dramatize suffering; she humanizes it. By naming the unspoken and evoking the silenced, Refugees in Their Own Country becomes both memorial and mirror — a gentle yet piercing reminder that the story of Sindh, and of Partition’s refugees, remains incomplete until it is truly heard.
No comments:
Post a Comment