ABSTRACT
It is a rare occurrence to find texts created by children at times of great upheavals. Be it the Partition of India, civil wars in erstwhile colonised spaces, or other narratives of dislocation and exile – the narratives and cultural artefacts are usually those which have been produced by adults. The Art of Exile: A Collection of Paintings by Tibetan Children in India is a pleasant exception. It brings together the first-hand accounts of children who have experienced one of the biggest cases of displacement of this century. My paper will attempt to read the text as a unique perspective on the impact of exile and displacement on little children. While attempting to locate and extract the repressed traumatic memories of their violated childhood through their paintings and interviews, the paper will focus on understanding the child’s perspective of such trauma, the way they select which memories to remember or forget, and their interpretation of the same.
