A tapestry of memories, mending the wounds of Partition

A tapestry, "Khwab-e-Rafu," symbolizes hope for India-Pakistan unity, featuring over 100 stitched pieces from diverse communities, telling stories of connection.

A small square of yellow cloth carries four fish, stitched as though they are travelling somewhere together. Two of them swim across small blue patches of fabric. The patches once belonged to a sari worn by the grandmother of the woman who made the piece. Born in Pakistan, she came to India during Partition and always wanted to return home, but died without being able to.

The tapestry is on display at Mool in South Extension as part of Taana Baana exhibition. (Representative photo)

“When this woman got to know that the piece would travel to Pakistan, she brought these patches with her, saying that since her grandmother couldn’t return to her home, a piece of her clothing should,” says Rubina Singh, founder of Rafunaama, a South Asian platform and curated archive of woven histories, textile art, and feminist resistance.

The little square with fish is one of over 100 pieces stitched into Khwab-e-Rafu (“Dreams of Mending”), a tapestry imagining a more peaceful future for India and Pakistan, people’s experiences with the violent Partition.

The pieces were made by people from across 13 cities in India and Pakistan, as well as members of diaspora communities in London and the United States. They came together during more than 20 stitching sessions held between August 15, 2025, and July 25 this year, when the individual pieces were finally stitched into a single tapestry.

Singh conceived the project with a simple intention: to shift the conversation around India and Pakistan away from hatred and violence and towards their shared history, culture and memories.

The stitches tell those stories in different ways. In one, a person offers a flower to someone on the other side of a fence. Another shows a heart split by a crack. Others carry messages such as “open the borders”.

“A lot of pieces in the tapestry have a story behind them. Everywhere we went, there was a sense of connection the attendees felt to Partition, and the other country. These are all people who just want to meet and talk to each other,” says Singh.

The making of the tapestry became an expression of that connection itself.

Singh could not conduct all the stitching sessions, given the travel involved. “And the India-Pakistan border is anyway closed,” she says wistfully.

Instead, the Rafunaama team reached out to artists and collectives across the two countries and in the diaspora through friends of friends, artists who had previously worked with Rafunaama, and even cold messages on Instagram. They found people willing to host and facilitate the sessions, and the stitches began accumulating across continents.

Bringing them all back to Delhi was another matter.

Collecting the pieces made in India was relatively straightforward. Those made in Chicago and London were either carried to India by facilitators when they travelled here or shipped, at the facilitators’ personal expense.

The pieces from Pakistan proved considerably harder to bring together.

“We held sessions in Karachi, Lahore and Balochistan. The Karachi stitches were picked up by the facilitator from London, who has family in the city. No one was travelling directly to Lahore and Balochistan, and even postage doesn’t travel between our countries now,” says Singh.

The pieces were eventually shipped to a friend in Dubai, who then sent them on to Delhi.

But for Singh, the logistical difficulties were almost beside the point. “What was evident during this process was that it was not about the pieces that were made, but about the discussions that happened during their making,” she says.

Even the final act of bringing the pieces together became a communal effort. Phalgun, an attendee at one of the Delhi sessions, volunteered to stitch the individual pieces into the finished tapestry, spending two to three days doing so.

Now, Khwab-e-Rafu is travelling again.

The tapestry is on display at Mool in South Extension from Friday to Saturday as part of Taana Baana, an exhibition for which the Independence Day weekend dates were chosen deliberately. After the exhibition, the Rafunaama team plans to approach the Partition Museum about displaying the tapestry there.

Eventually, the works will return to the places where they were made. But before that, the tapestry is scheduled to travel first to the United States in January or February next year, followed by London and Pakistan. In Karachi, it is set to be displayed on August 14 and 15, 2027, marking 80 years of Partition.

The exhibition, curated by artist Fatima Juned, takes its name from the “fabric of our society” and examines Partition alongside the fractures and realities of the present-day subcontinent. It includes textile works by other collectives, artist discussions, a documentary about the making of Khwab-e-Rafu, and a night walk in Nizamuddin on August 14, among other events. All events are free to attend.

For a tapestry about borders, perhaps it is fitting that its pieces have already crossed so many of them while being carried in luggage, passed between friends, shipped through a third country, and finally stitched together in Delhi.

And among them, four small fish are still travelling home.