Art as Archive and Antidote: A Story of Crisis and Care in South Asian Literature

Archives are traditionally understood as repositories of authentic, reliable documents preserved for their long-term value for institutions of power and governance. But in this chapter, I explore how definitions of archive extend beyond mere recordkeeping to encompass complex interactions of history, memory, and affect. I undertake close textual reading of Naeem Mohaiemen’s film Jole Dobe Na and Parimal Bhattacharya’s Nahumer Gram O Annyano Museum, works that blur the lines between found and constructed, factual and fictive, personal and collective. Mohaiemen’s film poetically archives illness and care giving, while Bhattacharya’s narrative weaves across disparate geographical and cultural landscapes, cinematic universes, and fictional worlds of longing, reflecting non-linear temporalities. My primary aim in situating these two works together is to study how art and imagination can help navigate a terrain of crises and present vastly different notions of archives, one where sentiments are accounted for.