between landscapes: first and second-gen melancholia
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Listening to Sawhney’s track brought me back to discussions with my family. I’ve recorded a few conversations with my dada, nani, and father, and listening to them, I’ve sort of come to see my dada as a kind of transitory figure, someone who had to find and remake home across different landscapes. Born in Una and displaced during Partition, he later spent years on the road during the 1971 Civil War. My dadi and her children went months without hearing from him, at times receiving rumors of his death. Yet, despite the turmoil, his stories of traversing South Asia were vivid and alive, often told as more of a euphoric recollection than melancholic reflection.
My dad reminds me a little of Sawhney’s father—a man who has made peace with the present and holds almost a kind of disdain for the past. Since coming to the West, he hasn't had any inclination to return to Pakistan, and had once told me and my sister that we weren't really Pakistani or Indian, but simply American. In this way, it seems like he's severed any melancholic ties to his past. For him, those landscapes appear to be "dead," a space of memory that no longer holds meaning. Of course, this “letting go” is nuanced, layered with lived human experience, but it creates this kind of tension. I’ve never seen those landscapes, yet there’s a deep sense of yearning.
This tension, I think, speaks to Sara Ahmed’s notion of melancholia as a spectrum of not knowing. There’s so much I don’t know, and yet there’s this longing of familiarity, a desire for belonging. Sometimes I wonder if this is a form of romanticization—a fetishization of a history and geography I’ve never known. Why can’t I simply “let go” and focus on the happiness given to me?
Ahmed critiques this happiness as a state imperative, particularly in Western contexts, where it’s tied to individualism, material security, and not being "stuck." For much of my family, coming to America represented a way toward security, perhaps even happiness—a kind of checkpoint after years of instability. I grew up with that security and privilege, and for this I try to be aware and grateful, and yet I also feel as though I’ve inherited these landscapes—these memories from my dada and nani—and as a result, I struggle to let go.
This conflict is mirrored in Sawhney’s music with grace. I feel like the track "Nadia"'s mixture of soundscapes—Hindi vocals alongside drum and bass—creates a collage that embodies the melancholic experience of navigating between different cultural worlds. It encapsulates the feeling of being between homes.
Also: while my dad seems to have distanced himself from Pakistan, a land he's familiar with, he too desires to see the farm where my Dada grew up—a place he's never known. It's like this longing, this inherited memory, acts as a bridge, connecting us to a past we haven't experienced firsthand.