58 | ORAL HISTORY
people who remember the time of undivided India are not going to be around much longer.” Aanchal began working on her thesis project, ‘Remnants of a Separation’, in 2013 under the guidance of Canadian photographer Raymonde April. She presented it in 2015 at Concordia University’s Galérie FoFA, having designed the viewing area as a 120-foot long, 10-foot wide gallery with a glass on one side to create a sense of “walking along a border and surveillance from the outside”.Visual arts theses are usually light on text, but Aanchal’s was 25 pages long. “I wanted to provide a context,” says Aanchal,
Aanchal putting the final touches on her presentation at the Galérie FoFA, Concordia University, Montréal JUNE 2018
PHOTO CREDIT: RAJNI MALHOTRA
was tired of being from the generation that is slowly forgetting the past,” she says, acknowledging that the study of history has so far been dominated by older researchers. “But this kind of work ages you beyond your years,” says the brighteyed Aanchal, who – having travelled across India, and to Lahore and Karachi in the course of her research – feels she has seen a glimpse of the other side and come to the realization that we’re all the same. “I hope my work will be the starting point for cross-border conversations,” she says. “It may be a naïve way to look at it, but the truth is, we share a common history, and the