What Remains

Childhood friends Navdha Malhotra and Aanchal Malhotra’s online museum makes memorabilia of old, forgotten objects.

- Neville Bhandara

ELLE: What made you want to start the Museum Of Material Memory?

Aanchal Malhotra: While conducting interviews for my book [Remnants Of A Separation (HarperCollins India), which studies the Partition through the belongings that people carried across the border], I noticed that objects went far beyond their physical constructs—a book held a grandparent’s childhood secret, a piece of jewellery embodied the painful memory of migration. I realised all objects of age possess memories. This museum is designed so that the current generation can learn about its past through items that their families hold dear.

ELLE: How do you collect and curate these objects?