Book Review: Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree

My Rating: 

⭐⭐️⭐️

After the demise of her husband, an octogenarian takes to her bed and turns her back (literally and figuratively) on the family, preferring to spend time staring at a wall hoping to slip through the cracks and disappear. The appeals and cajoling of her son, daughter-in-law, daughter and grandchildren fall on deaf ears. 

“She had grown tired of breathing for them, feeling their feelings, bearing their desires, carrying their animosities.”

But Ma eventually comes around and disappears with an old statue of Buddha, resurfaces and promptly goes to live with her daughter, Beti, a successful independent woman who defied societal norms and has lived life on her own terms. Roles are reversed and Beti becomes responsible for taking care of her mother who seems to have found a new lease on life and enjoys the carefree lifestyle her daughter’s home allows and the friendship of Rosie Bua, her hijra friend, who frequents Beti’s home without restriction or censure.

A shocking turn of events leads to Ma’s stubborn decision to travel across the border. Beti is compelled to embark on this trip with her mother and what follows is a series of revelations about her mother’s life that transcends borders and countries and while past and present are merged the author paints a poignant picture of how the definition of home can change over time and how despite the number of doors, thresholds and borders one may cross in a lifetime, at each point in our journey we leave a part of our heart and soul behind. 

“What is forgetting, have you any idea? Think about it. The things that happen, do they happen on purpose or in forgetfulness? The things that happened, were they accomplished by thinkers, or by those who ceased to think? Forgetting is dying. I’m not dead. I’d buried everything from my past in the sand. Today I’ve returned to that sand.”

The author uses a combination of narrative formats and plot devices including the omniscient third-person narrative, first-person (almost) stream of consciousness, anthropomorphism, satire and magical realism. The writing is descriptive, poetic and touches upon a range of themes - family dynamics, the evolving societal structure and gender roles, ageism and intergenerational trauma and forced migration – a lot is going on in this novel and the author attempts a light-hearted approach while delving into serious and often traumatic events in the history of the nation and the partition of India, forced migration and the utter devastation that followed. 

Tomb of Sand stretches over 735 pages ( Ret Samadhi=366 pages in Hindi on my Kindle) and is divided into three segments. To be honest it was sheer willpower that helped me plod through Part I and most of Part 2 of the narrative (almost 480 pages). The shifting narrative and somewhat haphazard structure, the overly descriptive writing (I found the translation too literal in some parts) and detail in some parts were exhausting! There was no coherent purpose for what was transpiring in the story. Only in the third segment do we get an idea of what the story is supposed to be about. The third part was sheer brilliance and somewhat redeemed the novel for me as all the threads of Ma’s life come together and we finally make sense of everything that came before. Even though I was not blown away by the novel in its totality, it did evoke nostalgia and inspire introspection. Some of the passages were beautifully penned, the imagery was stunning (especially in the third segment of the novel) and the author’s heartfelt and poignant portrayal of the mother-daughter dynamic throughout the novel makes for some heart-touching moments. I loved the numerous literary references strewn throughout the narrative and the homage to works of Partition literature. 

I appreciated the Translator’s Note at the end of the novel where Daisy Rockwell expresses her admiration for the Hindi language and the rhythm and imagery of the original text. I respect the hard work that went into translating Ret Samadhi and the efforts to stay true to the original, given the plethora of style and tone that Geetanjali Shree has used throughout the novel. I am immensely proud of the fact that an Indian author won the International Booker Prize (2022) for a novel originally written in Hindi and it pains me to not be able to give it a higher rating as a reader.