75 years after India's violent Partition, survivors can cross the border — virtually
NEW DELHI — First comes the melancholy twang of a South Asian sitar, plucking a ballad about nostalgia for childhood. Then the name of a faraway yet familiar place appears on a black screen, in Hindi. Suddenly the screen bursts into 3-D light, revealing a dusty street corner — one that Ishar Das Arora hasn't seen in 75 years.
"It's as beautiful as I remembered," he murmurs.
Das peers deeper into what looks like a bulky kaleidoscope strapped to his face, with stereo speakers over each ear. Inside, he sees auto rickshaws where there were once donkey carts. He spots an old mosque with the same pristine white dome he remembers, ringed with arches. He's surprised to see new concrete houses mixed in with older mud-brick ones.
Hot-pink bougainvillea spills over a fence. Someone has decorated a nearby tree with garlands for a wedding.
"My school is still there!" Das exclaims. "And the hills where we used to yell as children, and the last word would come back to us in an echo."
Das, 83, is sitting on his sofa in India's capital. But he feels like he's been transported back to his birthplace in what is now Pakistan — courtesy of a virtual reality headset. It plays a 3-D video recorded recently in his home village of Bela — which he hasn't visited in person since he was a child.
It's part of Project Dastaan ("story" in several South Asian languages), a documentary project that delivers immersive video experiences to survivors of the 1947 Partition of British-ruled India into independent India and Pakistan.
