Narrating Trauma and Displacement: Veera Hiranandani’s The Night Diary

Abstract

The Partition of India in 1947 led to the forced migration of millions of people accompanied by unspeakable violence and trauma. Several Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were displaced from their homes and had to move along religious lines across the newly drawn border between India and Pakistan. This led to a loss of power and control over the territory, a total destruction of the process by which a society establishes territorial organization and ownership. The present paper explores issues related to home, uprootedness, forced migration and how people coped up with its impact in the context of Veera Hiranandani’s fictional work The Night Diary (2018). Narrated in the form of epistles, The Night Diary portrays the partition trauma and displacement from the viewpoint of a twelve-year-old girl Nisha who is forced to leave her home in Pakistan and migrate to India after the partition. The paper examines how forced migration affects her identity as she tries to cope with the emerging harsh realities. The focus is on her attempts to re-root herself in the new surroundings even as undergoing loss, fears, and uncertainty. The paper examines how the writer narrativizes Nisha’s journey to portray the trauma of displacement felt even generations later.