For decades, newsreader and journalist Mishal Husain had only a partial knowledge of her grandparents’ experiences during Partition. It was a fragment of an old sari that finally sent Husain on a journey through time, using letters, diaries, memoirs and audio tapes to trace the lives of four people shaped by the Raj, a world war, independence and partition.
Husain, a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and the news on BBC One, shares her grandparents’ stories, from pre-Partition India through to their new lives and identities, and reflects on the shared heritage of the past.
