Niall Moorjani’s storytelling hour about their grandfather, Mohan: A Partition Story, was originally performed in 2021 – but like all good stories, all important stories, it’s worth telling for years to come. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of Partition: and as many of the people who lived through this bloody chapter of empire (as all its chapters were, and continue to be) are no longer with us, their stories must be told to be remembered.
Moorjani’s grandfather was just 11 years old when an arbitrary line was drawn to divide India into India and Pakistan. His was just one story amongst twelve million, and Moorjani doesn’t feel the need to “over-dramatise” it. Joined on stage by musical collaborator Sodhi on the tabla, and a single chair from their grandparents’ dining room, Moorjani weaves an entire world around an audience with not much more than the power of their words. As Moorjani sits on the chair, their voice, posture, and face magically shapeshifts into their grandfather’s: we hear the story as it would have been told to them as a grandchild.
It is no small feat to condense the history of the East India Trading Company, India’s uprisings for independence, imperial divide and rule tactics that exploded into horrific ethnic cleansing once Partition sparked the flame, and a tenderly told family history, into an hour – let alone to do so with this much warmth, humour, and open-heartedness. Mohan: A Partition Story is being performed again as a question: about what it means to demand memory justice for the atrocities of empire when knowing and remembering hasn’t stopped the tide of violence since; about what it means to look back at Partition and see the genocide in Palestine, see the systematic murder of Black people by the police, see violence against refugees. It’s a vulnerable question to ask, one whose answer remains elusive – but it’s a privilege to be trusted enough as an audience to hold it, together.
Mohan: A Partition Story, Pleasance Courtyard, until 30 Aug, 3.25pm