Mallika Ahluwalia, a public policy professional from Delhi, isn’t one to treat museums as repositories of mothballed relics and nostalgia. Instead, her curation takes visitors through a visceral experience of the past. The 35-year-old curator’s project—the Partition Museum, housed in the historic Town Hall building in Amritsar with its arched verandahs and Venetian glass doors, does just that—it humanises the Partition story. So, what were the objects that women treasured at that time? Textiles, diaries, books and utensils they carried as they fled their homes tell their stories. The agony of the immigrant experience manifests itself in a Satish Gujral painting, where memory pours out on canvas like dark waves.