Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree

 This is the Booker Prize winner of 2022. Something i wanted to read for a long time but the length of the book made me hesitate. I finally took the plunge and have emerged on the other side. 

Is this like any book i have read? No

Did it touch me and make me feel as if I was a part of the story? Yes

Is it written very differently and in a unique style? Yes

Will it stay with me? Yes

Will i recommend this to everyone I meet? Sadly No.

The payoff for thick fat books is the way everything makes sense at the end and the penny drops. And you slowly gasp when you realise where this was headed all along. How everything that was happening had a purpose. And that the payoff one waits for as a reader, having spent days, if not weeks, with the characters. Sadly, i did not feel so with this book

 

At 731 pages, this is a fairly long read. The way it is written, it needs commitment and focus. There are many side hustles with the story going off on a tangent - like the younger son. Like the retirement party. However, even if any of these had been left out, nothing would stay unexplained on incomplete. And that is my major grouse with the book.

The story, if one can call it that, is about unnamed characters of Ma, Bet, Bade, Banu, Serious Son and sundry other characters. No names are given to any except a few stray ones. Ma is 80 years old and is depressed (though no one calls it that) and spends her days lying on her bed facing the wall. She is gifted a colourful, almost magical walking stick by her grandson and this is a turning point in her behaviour. She goes to live with her daughter, and starts finding life more interesting. She has a transgender friend who comes and spends time with her. Together they are a riot. One day, this friend disappears and Ma expresses a desire to go to her childhood home in Pakistan, where she lived before migrating to India as a refugee when she was barely a teenager. 

This trip is taken and a lot of memories revisited. Ma is on a quest to find her first lover, to find closure, to find answers that have haunted her. She finds him, but he is comatose now and cannot give her any answers. 

As a plot or storyline, it is quite beautiful. As a narration, it sounds as if someone is speaking to you and rambling along. You cannot hurry them up even if what they are telling makes no sense, is disjointed, does not contribute to the story. You are held in a trance and the narration will proceed languidly. It is like a river that will flow at its own pace and nothing can hurry it up or make it go faster. If you get impatient, then that’s on you. 

Read it if you have the patience.