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Research Paper | Humanities | India | Volume 14 Issue 1, January 2025 | Popularity: 4.6 / 10

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Bodies and Borders in Geetanjali Shree?s The Tomb of Sand

Megha Patil, Dr. Stella Steven

Abstract: It is an undeniable fact that over years more and more borders, barriers, divisions, groups have emerged between countries, within countries, states, religions, societies, generations, genders, homes and more. These borders have always been legitimized or governed by either state repressive apparatuses or ideological repressive apparatuses which always go unquestioned. Geetanjali Shree writes, "Anything worth doing transcends boundaries". Shree's novel Ret Samadhi (Hindi) translated into English as The Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell has created history by being the first South Asian novel to win the International Booker Prize. It focuses on an octogenarian, Ma, who is seen to have lost the will to live in the beginning of the novel after her husband's death, sheds away from the conventional roles she has been playing that of a wife, mother, aunt and takes on a path of self-discovery leaving behind all the layers one by one that has ever defined her, stands on the threshold, traversing borders. Ma's embarkment of journey to Pakistan without a visa confronts her with several questions from the Pakistani officials at the border. Ma's answers to the questions reveal a new gaze of what a border should be further questioning the curtailment of individual's freedom because of increased polarization and of borders and boundaries being legitimized by institutional violence. The present paper tries to look at how bodies (especially that of a woman) transgress crossing boundaries that are laid down to them not only by the patriarchal system within but also boundaries between nations. It also looks at how from times immemorial a country's border has never been defined though a woman's gaze. The paper also attempts to look at how language, body, border and memory all become ?doors' through which a country as a whole and characters transcend anew in the novel.

Keywords: bodies, borders, repressive apparatuses, gender, nation, transgression

Edition: Volume 14 Issue 1, January 2025

Pages: 703 - 704

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.21275/SR25113110313

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