(Re) Living the Partition Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Study of Gulzar’s Footprints on Zero Line: Writings on the Partition

Abstract

This study examines the trauma caused by the partition of the subcontinent as represented in Gulzar's selected short stories. The partition of the subcontinent is a historical phenomenon that affected the lives of the people in South Asia. This research tries to reveal how the things left behind resurface in new contexts. Freud's psychoanalytical concepts of the 'Conscious' and the 'Unconscious' have been employed to explore the disastrous effects of the partition on the lives of the people living in this region. It also uses Bernstein's notion of re-contextualization in analyzing how the Partition has been revisited decades later in Gulzar's selected short stories. The study illuminates the elements of loss and tragedies through fabrics of memory, melancholia, and (re)living the trauma in the selected short stories. The research concludes that the effects of trauma and nostalgia are ongoing on people's present and future lives. The study reveals how madness, death trauma, and fear of abduction due to the partition and modern contexts have both continuation and uniqueness.