TRAVELLING from Kutch to Kashmir and from Karachi to the Khyber Pass, Sarah Singh, a one-woman army who shoots, directs, edits, scripts interviews and sound-mixes her 75-minute documentary on the India-Pakistan partition The Sky Blow, is a woman with a mission.

The 36-year-old with a Masters in Painting from the Maryland Institute believes that India is at a critical time. “One can no longer claim ignorance about diverse cultures; the world is smaller,” she says. “Yet we seem to be losing huge segments of our cultural history. Insanity is described as motion without memory, which is why it’s important we don’t lose our past.”

The urge to revisit Pakistan sprang from an Asia

Society event in Manhattan, where the future of South Asia was discussed and partition survivors shared their stories. “Their recollections were so vivid, it inspired me to delve into the subject and see if I could come up with a visually inspiring account,” says the Patiala born, US-based artist whose film was screened at the Asia’s Art Society’s Pakistan package on Saturday.

It begins by revisiting the Harappa site of the Indus Valley when India and Pakistan were culturally one. Quick cuts present a fragmented feel of a nation torn asunder in 1947, as stock footage represents the carnage and despair of forced migration; slain bodies lie in pools of water and abandoned stations. Clips of Pandit Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the last viceroy Lord Mountbatten, play with voiceover recordings.

Then we meet people—Inderjit Singh Khalsa who extended himself beyond religion and region to shelter people who would have been slaughtered. Suraj Nehru, who watched from the safety of her home as people fought. Tirath Ram Amla, one of the oldest serving members of Rajya Sabha, recalls the gory past. Pandit Yashpaul—one of India’s leading singers from the Agra gharana—yearns to perform in India, while musician Raza Kazim talks of multiple identities as a citizen and as a human being.

The film also offers breathtaking landscapes, the dusty barb-wired LOC where a dog slips through to be fed by Indian and Pakistani soldiers, while the local music of travelling minstrels’ underscores the entire film. Singh also delves into the Kashmir issue.

At the end, it’s the voice of the people calling for peace, including politico Natwar Singh and historian Romila Thapar. “It isn’t a simple winding up of the film but a broader philosophical concern,” she explains. “After 5,000 years of being at war, are we at a point where we can negotiate peace?”