The Department of English organized its 21st Enrichment Lecture as part of the ongoing virtual series, on 13 October 2021. The speaker for the lecture was Prof. Nandi Bhatia from the Dept. of English Studies at the University of Ontario, Canada. The lecture was about reading the Indian Partition across borders vis-a-vis feminist fictions from Canada. The lecture began with a discussion of the migration of South Asians to Canada and took up a detailed analysis of Anita Rau Badami’s novel entitled Can You Hear the Nightbird Call (2006) as a narrative of mobility while combining in itself the diasporic aesthetic; partition as a memory; disruption of the idea of ‘home’; contesting borders; possibilities of negotiation and, other inherited memories around the horrific event. It also threw light on the subtext of return and the gendered dimension of the experience. The talk was followed by a Q&A round wherein the students as well as the faculty members to interact with Prof. Bhatia. In sun, the lecture was a very enriching and engaging one and gave all an opportunity to re-examine the unfinished histories of Partition from several critical standpoints with respect to diasporic subjectivities and new forms of nationalisms.
