Hayley Gillespie

“…our physical alienation from India inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind,” (1308). 

This quote captures what I feel to be the main takeaway from this piece. Rushdie discusses the effects time has on our brains by referencing fragmentation. We remember things in a vague, almost dream state. Our distant memories are not remembered exactly the same way as they transpired; we miss pieces and chunks of scenes. Like a dream, our memories are bits and pieces placed together that might not always be coherent pictures, but our minds fill in the gaps to make sense of it. She discusses this with her talks of her homeland and remembering a home in black and white rather than the actual vibrant coloring of the house because of pictures she remembers more clearly. Our pasts and memories are a collection of bits and pieces rather than a distinctive whole.