Converge, Converse, consume, contain & coast, this is exactly what Malin, Quant, Rosetta & Emble do in 

’s 1948 Pulitzer winning baroque eclogue 

 The 138 line psychological & spiritual verse is an allegory on the lives of the four protagonists Malin, Rosetta, Quant & Emble perfectly manifesting Jung’s concept of disintegration of psyche into four different functions thought, feeling, intuition & sensation respectively.

Plotted against the backdrop of World War II, in a third avenue bar, The Age of Anxiety serves a natural setting contrasting with an artificial style of diction, which in all regards does justice in capturing the context of fear and malaise afflicting the population after the war, and hence certainly advocates the concerns of a generation continually in the vicinity of turmoil fighting wars externally at fronts and internally with itself as well, but more in a way we deem it to propel rather than driven by itself.

For the past 75 years human beings have been intricately attached to the horrors of war, bloodshed, genocide, belief and norms provided by the authority and mutually brought out by the anxiety cultivated. Although, previous eras were far more jittery than ours provided with much impacting revolts, pillaging mercenaries, famines, devastation, plagues and wars, but with the tantrums or ‘bounties’ of the modern world, the advent of 

 serves a staunch, paradoxical pedestal to consider anxiety as a condition, leading to a state of depression eventually.

When, anxiety was at the forefront of medicinal & mental consideration, Depression was a rare sickness but since then, it turned out to be the focal point of mental health concerns. By 

 of India’s population was suffering from mental depression whereas 

 were suffering with anxiety problems that account to be the highest in the world according to 

. One of the most puzzling phenomena in the history of psychiatry is how depression replaced anxiety as the most intense health condition associated with stress conventions.

This stress convention envelops a diffuse & multifaceted cluster of mystic, physical & inter-personal issues that frequently emerge as a response to the strains of everyday life. The wary of expectations, burdened with insecurities, and denunciating external conditions with over thinking completing this vicious cycle, lead to other problems like headaches, fatigue, inability, distractions, crippling panic attacks, loneliness, suicidal tendencies, ultimately paralyzing our capabilities, compromising our professional & intimate terms, unable to redress in terms of that specific epoch, or that accounting further.

The effect does not only cater to the person suffering from it but largely effects the people around him or her, which certainly describes Auden’s concept of 

, certain anxieties may be overcome not by the altering of conditions but by the cultivation of mutual sympathy – perhaps mutual love, even among those who were strangers before or you have fought wars with. Freud highlighted it as

“The nodal point at which the most various and important questions converge, a riddle whose solution would be bound to throw a flood of light upon our whole mental existence.”

The most significant way seeking relief from this stress of anxiety is seeking a refuge of comfort which one seeks, the substantial ventilation of emotions seems more effective than keeping it restricted to oneself, one should find comfort in sharing their distress.

“Our primary mode of relinquishing presence is by leaving the body and retreating into the mind — that ever-calculating, self-evaluating, seething cauldron of thoughts, predictions, anxieties, judgments, and incessant meta-experiences about experience itself. The brainy modern loves not matter but measures, no solids but surfaces.’’



Alan Watts, British Philosopher & Writer

The constant thinking, and judging of one’s actions on the basis of one’s previous experiences hinders their presence and diminishes the vault of happiness, the very art of presence is the crux of human existential happiness and best antidote to anxiety. In this scenario, anxiety has now received a realization more than ever before, and hence our age possesses the potential to curb it by love, care, empathy, understanding and sharing our distress with each other rather than surrendering to the monsters of anxiety or depression.

“We would rather be ruined than changed

Ours is the Age of Anxiety

“Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,

Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition.

With their different diets and incompatible gods.”

’, the great political upheaval prompted many other profound works. Poetries of 

 have vividly encapsulated this great political tragedy, which triggered one of the most violent and devastating massacres of human history and an enduring acrimony between the two nations.

With almost a quarter of total human population, the two countries share a resonating relation with each other, which has been under continual surveillance over the years, with such presence on the international sphere and critical political mechanisms interplaying, matters as sensitive as partition require a very measured, careful and sometimes chary approach.

 literature played a crucial role in unifying the nation together, but after the division literature had a different character to enact, with more varied demographics and much agitated nerves, the new literature as 

’ needed to correspond to things differently.

Although there’s no consensus on what actually determines a work as partition literature, the accounts that narrativize this impudent historic event could be referred as partition literature.Irrespective of the fact that the narrative is a work of fiction or non-fiction, almost every work has shown ‘partition’ in a negative light.

The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan

 narrate the incident under the purview of Non-Fiction, ample work of fiction provide the description of the event through varied perceptions.

Dressing the partition of India in fiction was perhaps one of the most difficult tasks as a writer, from occupying the void created by political turmoil to filling it with imaginary settings, detailed characters and a storyline which accommodates multiple emotions and sentiments judiciously is a mammoth task.

Fiction reaches path of readers that other kinds of books don’t.

Partition of India provided the base for many prominent fictional narratives that substantially fulfill all the aforementioned aspects skillfully in an unprecedented manner.

The first book of this lineage has to be the 

1981 Man Booker Prize Winner Salman Rushdie

’, narrated by the protagonist Saleem Sinai himself who is born at the midnight of Independence, he is compared with India itself. With his telepathic powers, he unravels the domain of cultural, linguistic and religious diversities, and further extends to a jarring note on Indira Gandhis’ ‘

 is another phantasmagoric epic about an artificial country which is and is not Pakistan simultaneously.

It is followed by one of the most appropriate novels in this context, 

’, which talks about the Muslim Sikh unity in the fictional village of Mano Majra, the story exemplifies how communal tensions develop in an otherwise peaceful setting.

 is a paradigm of Ghosh’s intense narrative, capturing style and subtle characters that echo the pangs of partition in the psychological urn.

 explores the possibilities of aversion of Partition through a young photographers’ eye in 1942 British India and the tumult of Hindu Muslim riots in 1947. The story provides a fresh perspective with harsh political commentary and sexual comedy to compliment.

 are unarguably the most realistic descriptions of the horrors of partition, endowed with the faculty of sympathy and understanding Manto’s stories like 

 provide a picturesque like no other writer.

The exodus and the subsequent aftermaths of division have also been captured on celluloid adroitly. Beginning with 

’s novel of the same name and deals with the religious bigotry, fanaticism and communalism against the partition.

 raised questions regarding the differentiation of an integral population and the dilemma that the protagonist Saleem Mirzai faces like many others, based on 

’s unpublished story, the movie earned several accolades to its name.

 continues to be one of the longest movies of Indian Cinema, starring 

 in lead roles it revolves around an immigrant family during the 

’, where a Parsi family is caught in the communal tensions between the Hindus and the Muslims, in the city of 

’s novel of the same name where an ensemble cast comprising 

 is shown to struggle against Hindu Muslim probe of partition.

 continues to be a popular citation among critiques, where a Punjabi man’s desire for a son against the backdrop of partition provides a different angle to the historicity of the event, 

While it’s been Seventy two years of Independence and the tragedy of partition, the narratives provided in these stories have continued to preserve the essence of this great political schism which has great social, mental and emotional implication on the lives of millions of people, fiction as always will continue to exert its presence in every significant account of history.

Articles by Faizan Salik

Ours is the Age of Anxiety

Plotting Tales of Partition: Friction that Fuels the Fiction

Ours is the Age of Anxiety

Plotting Tales of Partition: Friction that Fuels the Fiction