DEAR TOBA TEK SINGH

                                                   SHREYA S (20SJCCC374)

                     

    

                                                 ENGLISH REPORT

TOBA TEK SINGH

I have chosen to make poster. Posters are one of the most creative forms of expressing such historical theme based content. Than just narrating a story in a simple way, doing something creative is better and stays in the viewer’s mind for a longer period of time. Making poster is an effective way of reaching the readers because we can narrate a whole story in a pictorial form and what I feel is people can remember the story better if they see the content than hearing it and I find poster a better form in such cases. Pictures here act as time travel, people who do not know what happened in the past can go through the incidents by looking at the pictures.

 

As I mentioned before viewers find it interesting if the story is told in a creative form such as posters, videos, letters, etc. nowadays everyone is active on social media and when we upload these posters or any content on instagram or YouTube or on a blog website many of them tend to read the content and gain knowledge. People are not ready to open books and read stories so we can draw their attention towards such stories through social media. I personally do not like reading books but when it is on social media or if it is in a form of video or pictures I feel like reading it or to know more about that content. When it is a historical story people do not have chance of viewing it or experiencing it so when we show them the pictorial form of the story then it reaches the reader more effectively. While making a poster I could even add my opinions and views on the story. When it is in a pictorial form it is much simpler to understand than reading the whole story.

 

There is an exchange of mental asylum people between India and Pakistan at the time of partition. Many of them suffered in this period. Bishan Singh and his painful struggle for identity, is a symbol of the displacement suffered by millions of partition refugees. The story talks about partition through the lens of a mental asylum. I feel Bishan Singh reflects the partition refugees. This is not just a story of Bishan Singh but it is a story of many people just like him who suffered in the Partition period. This story gives a clear insight of the people and the situation in both India and Pakistan at that time. Not only Toba Tek Singh but I would like to stress upon the Partition context in this story.

 

In the Toba Tek Singh story I have chosen the Partition context. For many years Bishan Singh was in asylum and was in search of a place called Toba Tek Singh. As he never interacted with the other people in the asylum nobody knew his name and thus they called him Toba Tek Singh. He asked many where Toba Tek Singh was, but nobody in the asylum could give him an answer. When he was being moved to India he asked one of the officials where Toba Tek Singh was and when the official told him that it is in Pakistan he tried to run back but was interrupted by the officials there. He let out a loud cry and by the time officials saw he was lying dead in between the barbed wires, India on one side and Pakistan on the other side, lying dead on a nameless land. Bishan Singh and many others just like him suffered at the time of partition and he is involved and affected in this context.

 

I have assumed Toba Tek Singh as a person who is representing all the people who have suffered during Partition. Toba Tek Singh clearly depicts how all the mixed community people got shattered by the political acts. In the actual story climax Bishan Singh dies but according to me Bishan Singh had all the rights to know about his hometown and his family. Partition did not mean that people cannot know about where they are and where their family was. I wish Bishan Singh was sent back to his hometown, where his family resided. He struggled, fought to go back to Pakistan but he was not allowed to do so, which is unfair.

 

Partition could have been done in a better manner without shattering families and communities. None of them even cared to understand the people’s emotions and respect it instead they just wanted to divide them among the countries. People had to suffer but still politician’s continued playing their games. If Partition was done in the right way by considering people’s emotions and if Bishan Singh was given a chance then all of them would have been in their hometowns happily with their family.