The first Indian language translation novel awarded the Booker Prize (2022) is notable for its sweeping imagination and power of language, writes Alka Saraogi 

Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi)
Geetanjali Shree
Rajkamal Prakashan
Rs.299
376 pp

The first Indian language translation to be awarded the Booker Prize 2022 and the fifth novel of Geetanjali Shree leaves the reader wonderstruck with its sweeping imagination and sheer unprecedented and uninhibited power of language. Shree is known for her experiments with content and form, but this new novel grips you with its storyline as well, which had not been the author’s forte earlier.
To narrate a bit of the first part of the story, an 80-plus mother turns back on the world after being widowed. The family keeps cajoling her to come out of her isolation and the narrative unfolds into the familiar saga of a doting son, a recalcitrant daughter-in-law and a daughter, who with her rebellious lifestyle is not on speaking terms with her disapproving brother.

This is the first part of the novel, but the story is told with thousands of fine nuances of relationships expressed in language that’s minted anew. It is the language we speak inside us, a continuous chatter without punctuation. In written form, this language acquires a rhythm of its own with abundant synonyms including words and sounds unheard that fit seamlessly.

The craft of storytelling is discussed throughout the novel and there are many confusing voices. Even crows become narrators to display knowledge of saris and at other times to acknowledge their power to transcend borders dividing nations.

This playfulness within the story can be exhilarating or exasperating depending on the mood and propensity of the reader. This reader found herself waiting to go back to the narrative all day, leaving it at times to wonder what it takes to write a book like this. One is pretty sure the author also left writing it many a times and picked it up to start anew, waiting for another mood to dawn. This is a book to be read in many sittings, and the reader is likely to experience a craving to go back to it. The details of thoughts and emotions as well as settings weave a compelling magic.

The first part ends with the aged mother coming back to face life again and distributing her goods and possessions to all in the neighbourhood. She also disappears one day for more than 24 hours but is found after much agony in the family and resolves to live with her daughter.

The second half of the narrative is a great love story of mother and daughter. The daughter brings the old woman back to life, even as the mother literally rediscovers the child in herself and the caring daughter, a writer by profession, becomes the mother, totally giving up personal freedom. Side stories of a live-in relationship of the daughter, and a friendship that the old mother shares with a eunuch — playing the double role of a man and a woman — are engaging tales, narrated in the usual streaming manner, with details veering from constipation and bowel habits to food and paraphernalia of quotidian life.

The eunuch, Rosy bua alias Raza tailor, is murdered for her property and the mother again retracts into a shell. The upshot of which is her decision to travel to Pakistan to fulfil Rosy’s last wish.

This novel is epic in its depiction of a family with its strained relationships: mother and son, husband and wife, brother and sister and the two grandsons, one of them settled in Australia. Of course, without the rich language and imagery, it would have been impossible to write this modern Mahabharata.

The last part of the novel constitutes a somewhat incredulous tale of a Hindu woman with a Muslim husband left behind during Partition, whom she manages to meet before she is downed by an army bullet. An old Buddha idol from a museum in Pakistan is omnipresent in the story, which the mother brings with her during her escape to India during Partition and how she takes back with her to Pakistan. But stories written with such abandon take their own course and it is not at all important where it reaches in the end and whether it’s credible or not.

Yet the uniqueness of this novel is that it takes the reader inside a seemingly ordinary world suffused with myriad stories of the subtle tensions that are common in all relationships. It also highlights the desire and boldness of ordinary folk to live life on their own terms. If only a few samples of the language could have been given, one could really experience the sheer power of the Hindi language.