"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
Objects become lifelong companions and lives become intertwined with them in myriad ways. What do objects tell us as they kindle and caress our memories? Do they divulge stories about themselves and the times and places they belonged to? Can they help unravel the pasts they preserve, of good times and bad?
Seventeen authors explore these possibilities by teasing out different strands and layers of memories that objects trigger, unwinding them and in the process laying bare myriad lives and many individual journeys. How far have they been able to trace back the roots and how long have journeys been followed, how much of the pasts are possible to retrieve and how much are lost, comprise the narratives and their singular feature. Time serves as the conduit for emotions to be teased out from the crevices of personal reminiscences.
The anthology is a rich repository of family history -accounts of people navigating lives through challenges posed by political and social upheavals, fascinating expose of lives richly lived or agonizingly suffered. The stories of ordinary people give a human face to historical moments. Every story holds prospects for longer and more complete narratives, plugging gaps that recorded history is often unable to do. The presence of the author in every story makes it personal and poignant.
Tapti Roy (editor), Anita Cameron, Indira Chowdhury, Sumita Sen, Pragati Tipnis, Jhuma Sanyal, Joyshree Ghosh, Urmi Ray, Pauline Clarke, Madhumita Mazumdar, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Smita Chowdhry, Baijayanti Ray, Prajna Sen, Anita Kar, Judy Opitz, Mahasweta Chaudhury, Animesh Basu
This book is edited by Tapti Roy, an independent scholar based in Cambridge, UK. Her books include The Politics of Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (1994), Raj of the Rani (2006), Print and Publishing in Colonial Bengal - The Journey of Bidyasundar (2019). She runs and manages the Blog pastconnect.net that publishes real life, personal stories from across the globe.
