The talk, followed by a film screening, looked at the interface of marginalized identity and violent displacement in contemporary India. When a home, as both metaphor and memory, is lost, can it ever be rebuilt? And, can gender norms be bent and re-crafted?
What happens to people when they are violently displaced? Buffeted by winds of hate and forced out of their homes and ancestral villages. Scattered like human debris in relief camps; never able to return. How do they rebuild a new home and a new life, with hearts unable to erase the memories of all that has been left behind?
The film is set in a town in north India, where targetted violence in 2013 forced over 60,000 people to flee their homes in fear. Many could never return. The Colour of My Home is about rebuilding broken lives. It is about the effect of losing home and identity on strong women like Momina, men like Kallu, Anis, and Allahmer Chacha, and the choices that now face a young woman like Rani. The film is about scars that hate and violence leave on the human soul. It is about remembering and loss. It is also about the power of hope and the will to survive.