Tomb of Sand
The story of Maa and Beti
It is the story of Maa and Beti — a pair that resolved to begin the book together. Maa read it in Hindi and would report her insights to the Beti. Ret Samadhi became her pit stop for the day between reading her Gita and chanting the slokas (verses). All this while the Beti waited to begin, to see if her thoughts would align with Maa’s. For wasn’t it Maa who had induced this reading habit in her? Little by little, putting in the hours, the Beti is half the reader she created her to be. Maa always had her back: her composure was the answer to her offspring’s rebellions. She always wondered who she was more — her father’s daughter or Maa’s. Could it be the latter? For, didn’t everyone exclaim how the Beti resembled Maa? Reading this book together was a sentiment she knew would carry for years to come, the Beti. Through a shared language of translated literature, they would tug a story in them — a bridge to their love of reading and stories they often share in conversations. Tomb of Sand would become the language. And it did.
Phone conversations now revolved around sentences. The rhythm that drove these sentences. Maa explained to Beti this tactic of writing in Hindi literature. And Beti, the wordplay that Shree and Daisy Rockwell master. For the shared love of sarees, the 6-yard drape, Beti chuckles and says, ‘There’s a whole section on sarees. Did you count how many of those types you have?’ But she didn’t.
As it happens — the circle of life — Maa had become the Beti, and Beti Maa. Beti diligently stuck to the book while Maa lingered somewhere between and paused. With an enthused voice of a satisfied reader, Beti coaxed her to finish.
Tomb of Sand is a story of many things. A story that springs from history but only meets it halfway down the book. It is about boundaries we cross for the people we love or create out of religion and gender. It is a requiem of partition. And a story of Women. Shree writes, ‘Once you have got women and a border, a story can write itself.’ With their omnipresence, they fight the precincts. These stories — sometimes forgotten or creating ripples are what is left over for us to muse.
And hence, the Beti muses:
This tomb is a maze. You enter one way, but it leads you elsewhere. There are shadows, dark narrow alleys, and deserts. You keep going twisting and turning in your route to the exit. There is a sigh of relief. The maze has won you over. Or is it that you have traversed it after all and reached the end?!
And what of Maa and Beti? There is so much resilience in Maa, a willful character, as she walks and keeps walking. Positivity and openness to welcome people, while Beti keeps her guard up: A social butterfly vs the solitary reaper. It makes me wonder if this bond — of mother and daughter — reflects similarly everywhere. Shree made me believe it does by writing the uncanny resemblances of it.
Shree writes, ‘Literature has a scent, a soupcon, all its own. And that is its style.’ Her own style is intricate as she captures the rooted earthiness of Indian families in playful sentences. Certain instances make you forget it is prose because the verse flows like a poem. It is perhaps that same rhythm Maa was talking about she loved in Ret Samadhi too. Coupled with mysticism and a language that personifies beauty, this is a story to remember. And if not as a whole, then little moments that Shree touches the nerve with, and the essence of how she portrays it all.
I read some parts in the original Hindi at a later stage and queried my mother for clarity. Both languages have their distinct capacities to expand and reach the reader. But beautiful just the same.
Literature does have a scent. And so do memories — which we want to bottle and keep for the fear of forgetting. I wish I had caged the one when Maa read to me for the first time. But because Beti does not want to lose this, here is her attempt at bottling this memory through words.
It is the story of Maa and Beti.
