From the Lived Experience of Punjab 1984 in Punjab to Its ‘Mnemonic Imagination’

Abstract

The turbulent year of 1984 in Punjab, India, has been reconstructed and relived through several acts of memorializing. But most of these are either political or sectarian and fail to capture the experiences of the common people during the heydays of militancy in Punjab. The present chapter presents the flow of trauma and its interjection in the act of recollecting and articulating personal and collective memory through the analysis of Roll of Honour by Amandeep Sandhu. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, the endeavor is to analyze the significance of the semi-autobiographical account of trauma and its representation as a ‘transferential experience’ for the one on the receiving end. Second, to study a semi-autobiographical novel – as a note of survival – as an artistic way of constructing collective memory that helps to understand the process of remembering, dis-remembering, and mnemocide. The chapter also depicts that traumatic memories can also provide a glimmer of empowerment and a sense of optimism, particularly, in the way that writing experiences can turn out to be healing experiences.