BOOKWATCH
United by Partition
BY ANITA JOSHUA
Train to Pakistan: An Illustrated Edition, Khushwant Singh, Roli Books, Rs. 495.
IT is a perfect fit: His prose and her photographs. One look at the illustrated edition of Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan and it would seem as if he had commissioned lenswoman Margaret Bourke-White to freeze frames of the Partition for his book.
Singh, of course, needs no introduction but Bourke-White may not ring a bell. One of the earliest photojournalists, the best way to introduce Bourke-White to Indians is through Richard Attenborough's film "Gandhi" where her role was etched by Candice Bergen.
In India for Life magazine to cover Partition, Bourke-White's black-and-white photographs tell their own story; in stark detail. Still, they complement Singh's novel in every disturbing detail. For, despite being a novel, Train to Pakistan has vignettes from Singh's own experience of Partition as a 32-year-old making the painful journey from Lahore to this side of the border.
While about a 100 of Bourke-White's photographs were used by Life magazine, those that were never published have been picked up by Roli Books to bring out an illustrated edition of Train to Pakistan in its 50th year.
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