A story about a person. A person regaling a story. A story embedded in a person. A person embedded within a story. Where would the story go if there were no characters? What would the characters do without plot or actions for them to do? One completes the other. This is not a part of the story we are reading, but this is the beginning of every story we read.
Such is the lyricism of TOMB OF SAND by Geetanjali Shree, the 2022 International Booker Prize winner. I had the good fortune of watching these two authors, one an author and one a translator. There is a difference, you might say. They are authors, nonetheless. Conventional methods of storytelling do not bind Geetanjali Shree. The story leads her; the characters take hold of her, and she writes what they will.
A story told in three parts, TOMB OF SAND is an epic saga of a woman, now grown old, as she peels her life story like an onion one after another. Ma (Mother) is also very unconventional. She likes surprises and keeps the surrounding people Bade (Elder son), Bahu (Daughter-in-law), and Beti (Daughter), on their toes all the time. She goes through metamorphoses, much like the walking stick full of pictures of butterflies on it gifted to her by her grandson. From being cooped up in a room with no motivation to get up and do anything in the first part, in the final part, she explores another country (or the place she was living in was another country for her?) in her ripe old age and strives to join dots from her childhood.
A tiny 200-page book in its original language Hindi, TOMB OF SANDbecomes a 720-page mammoth in English. This is a testament to the thoroughness of Daisy Rockwell, the translator, and how she wanted the book's emotion, cultural convention, and philosophy to be preserved in translation. Daisy beautifully captures the poetic nature of Hindi in the unique linguistic style of the novel. With brief sentences, most not exceeding ten words, Daisy translates Geetanjali Shree's poetry as prose. She is open to long run-on paragraphs when the story demands it.
This genre-bending story of a mother and her children who only want to keep her happy without letting go of their own selfish lives paints emotions so fundamental. TOMB OF SAND circumscribes all stories in the sense that it is all-encompassing of all of the stories written. No reader will feel alienated while reading this jarringly immersive tale. One might feel their own story is being celebrated through this novel.
I do not have an end for this review as I can go on enumerating these little details that provoke such profound thoughts and a perspective shift. This is what we should feel when we immerse ourselves in literature, and the author agrees. Here is a small paragraph from the book that talks about this same feeling:
The world is in dire need of literature because literature is a source of hope and life. So the world finds a way to dissolve into literature via harum-scarum hidden-open paths. It quietly ends up soaked in the stuff. It tiptoes into literature. It seeks to erase its despair by reveling in unique ways of freeing itself from the world that literature employs.
A playful, feminist, and utterly original epic set in contemporary northern India, about a family and the inimitable octogenarian matriarch at its heart.
“A tale tells itself. It can be complete, but also incomplete, the way all tales are. This particular tale has a border and women who come and go as they please. Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself . . .”
Eighty-year-old Ma slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband. Despite her family’s cajoling, she refuses to leave her bed. Her responsible eldest son, Bade, and dutiful, Reebok-sporting daughter-in-law, Bahu, attend to Ma’s every need, while her favorite grandson, the cheerful and gregarious Sid, tries to lift her spirits with his guitar. But it is only after Sid’s younger brother—Serious Son, a young man pathologically incapable of laughing—brings his grandmother a sparkling golden cane covered with butterflies that things begin to change.
With a new lease on life thanks to the cane’s seemingly magical powers, Ma gets out of bed and embarks on a series of adventures that baffle even her unconventional feminist daughter, Beti. She ditches her cumbersome saris, develops a close friendship with a hijra, and sets off on a fateful journey that will turn the family’s understanding of themselves upside down.
Rich with fantastical elements, folklore, and exuberant wordplay, Geetanjali Shree’s magnificent novel explores timely and timeless topics, including Buddhism, global warming, feminism, Partition, gender binary, transcending borders, and the profound joys of life. Elegant, heartbreaking, and funny, it is a literary masterpiece that marks the American debut of an extraordinary writer.
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