What does home mean to Mara Ahmed and where does she feel most at home were the first questions that came to my mind. \u201cThe idea of \u2018home\u2019 and what it means to us is something that\u2019s always fascinated me,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I made \u2018A Thin Wall\u2019(2015), a film about the partition of India, I didn\u2019t want to limit myself to the politics of colonialism and nation-states, the backdrop to the dividing up of British India. I saw it as a much broader exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the meaning of home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmed\u2019s maternal family is originally from Gurgaon, India, a city 20 miles outside the Indian capital New Delhi. At the time of the Partition, Ahmed\u2019s mother was only 5 years old but, according to the artist, her mother \u201chas vivid memories of her home in Gurgaon \u2013 the hand woven beds (with mosquito nets) that would be placed outside to temper summer nights, the plays that her older brother and his friends would stage, the swing that her father got installed in the central, open-air atrium of the house. This was the happy landscape of her childhood. She has never been able to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n