Last month, an event in Agra featuring novelist Geetanjali Shree (who won this year’s International Booker Prize) had to be cancelled after a Hathras resident filed a police complaint against her. According to the complainant, Shree’s Hindi novel Ret Samadhi (translated to English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, which won the Booker) hurt Hindu sentiments with its passage on Shiva and Parvati. Having read the novel in both languages, I can confirm that the claim is laughable. But it’s a reminder of where we are as a society today.
One of the finest examples of Partition literature in the 21 st century, Tomb of Sand has strong, progressive views on communal violence, India-Pakistan, nation-state politics in general, and the nature of borders everywhere. And because somebody didn’t like these opinions, a trumped-up charge of ‘hurting Hindu sentiments’ has been duly whipped out. Tomb of Sand, however, deserves every award and recognition it’s receiving worldwide — an American edition is currently in the works and will be released next January. The story of an 80-year-old woman and her attempts to reconnect with her pre-Partition past in Pakistan, Tomb of Sand has dozens of memorable passages about borders and the protean nature of memory.
