"The walls of this house are etched with memories which will long be forgotten in the pursuit of a promised dream. The future is uncertain."

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The TV is on in the living room. The reporter in his British accent is talking about the mass migration of people. Sensational news with kitschy 1940s music that you would find in some romantic Gene Kelly film. This is only a memory. Reality pushes its way in, the brutal sound of the train’s wheel hitting the tracks reminding you of where you are. Home lingers still. Around you the walls are grey. Flies swarm a plate of rice. A cricket bat and ball have been abandoned. There is nothing celebratory about an exodus. 

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Azaadi Ki Taraf? (Towards Freedom?) is an immersive VR experience that transports viewers into the tumultuous time of the partition of British India in 1947 into two new independent states, India and Pakistan. Created by Miraal Habib, a new media artist and designer from Karachi, and Kunal Singh, a creative technologist and multimedia artist from Bangalore, Azaadi Ki Taraf? Is a melding of time and space that speaks to the generational trauma of Partition 1947. 

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Viewers witness a recurring nightmare of Ibrahim Khan, a Muslim man from pre-partitioned India. By exploring his abandoned home after he is forced to flee from Amritsar to Lahore, one can experience the chaos and urgency with which millions of people migrated over the India-Pakistan border in a matter of weeks, leading to one of the largest and bloodiest mass migrations in the history of mankind.

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Kunal and Miraal have combined historical artifacts accurate for the time, along with archival footage and news media from 1947 to highlight the deep contradiction between the fantasy and promises of freedom and the stark reality of turmoil, violence, upheaval and displacement.

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Exhibiting at MANIFEST:IO 2025, we asked the artists more insight into their project.

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What made you decide on this topic in particular?

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We were drawn to the idea of conflicting memories and collective amnesia. Partition remains a point of deep contemplation in both Indian and Pakistani cultures, yet the narratives surrounding it vary drastically. Even between the two of us, the stories we grew up with on opposite sides of the divide paint starkly different pictures. Rather than present a single, definitive version of events, we wanted to highlight how history is shaped by personal experience and perspective—sometimes, there is no objective truth, only the truth of lived realities.

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What changed for you when embarking on this project and learning more about Partition?

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As we read personal testimonies, what stood out most was the dissonance between what people at the time had believed lay ahead, what was promised to them, and what actually unfolded. Many clung to the promises of freedom and independence, only to be met with unprecedented violence, displacement, and loss. This contrast became central to our piece—juxtaposing political rhetoric with the brutal realities that followed. The more we explored, the more we realized that Partition was not just a historical event but an emotional and psychological rupture that still lingers today.

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What was the process? How did you choose what objects to focus your storytelling on?

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We initially considered telling a singular personal story but decided instead to capture a broader experience of displacement. Through research, we identified recurring themes—leaving behind homes and possessions in an instant, the looming sense of danger, and the railways as a symbol of migration. Every object we included was carefully chosen to reflect this history. The house is filled with personal belongings left behind in haste, and the train scene, textured with archival images of migrants, transforms history into something spectral and haunting. Our goal was to make these spaces feel real—both as remnants of the past and as echoes of memory.

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How can new media tools and technologies help us make sense of the past?

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New media allows us to approach history in ways that traditional storytelling cannot. By using VR, we weren’t just retelling the past—we were immersing the audience in it, making them feel the weight of displacement firsthand. AI tools like Meshy.ai helped us reconstruct culturally accurate objects, while generative techniques let us bring archival imagery to life in new ways. Even the process of working in Unity, with scripts fine-tuned to mimic the movement of a train or the flicker of an old television, allowed us to create an environment that feels tangible, where history isn't just observed but experienced.

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Beyond this, we also built an archive of everyday objects relevant to the time and place—objects that don’t exist in the marketplace. That absence itself is telling. It hints at how little these stories have been preserved, at least in the context of new media projects. 

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One of the most important parts of this experience for us so far has been sharing the project with other people from the subcontinent and realizing how deeply moving it is for those of us who have only ever heard these stories to now feel them embodied within us.

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You can experience Azadi Ki Taraf? as a 360 film on Youtube:

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Azaadi Ki Taraf?

Designed, developed and directed by Kunal Singh & Miraal Habib

Technical support: Benjamin Rose

Exhibited at MANIFEST:IO 2025

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Miraal Habib is a new media artist and designer from Karachi, Pakistan, exploring the intersection of nature, technology, and human perception. Her immersive installations and generative artworks blend ecological storytelling, speculative design, and evolving systems to reflect on sustainability and the relationship between humanity and the natural world.  

Kunal Singh is a Berlin-based creative technologist and multimedia artist whose work draws inspiration from his Indian heritage. Using 3D and generative tools his art envisions speculative futures informed by the perspectives and histories of the Global South. 

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