Ruffled by a book

Julio Ribeiro

One of my two daughters told me that the Sangh Parivar was displeased with Geetanjali Shree’s Booker Prize pick Tomb of Sand. Three law students who had interned with PCGT (Public Concern for Governance Trust), disappointed at not meeting me because of my current indisposition, visited me and presented me with the book, written in Hindi, the author’s mother tongue. An Englishwoman, Daisy Rockwell, translated it into English. It was the translated version that I read.

The rigid Parivar will have to revise its attitude to changes in cultural mores with the passage of time.

Tomb of Sand is a tome of 725 pages. It meanders, at times, but at no stage does the mind wander or shut off. The alliteration and allegorisation is magical, even in the translated English version. My friend, Satish Sahney, has decided to read the original in Hindi and get back to me with his comments. I was more interested in knowing the cause of BJP’s discomfiture. I found it only at the fag end of the book.

The book is basically the story of two women, an 80-year-old grandmother living in Delhi with her son, who is a government official with all the trappings of office — a big bungalow with a garden thrown in. ‘Bade’, as he is called by his family, has a sister who is a rebel, independent of nature and with modern ideas to boot. She has left home, Bade’s home, since in our Indian families, brothers look after their sisters till they are married.

She goes to live in a rented accommodation and works as a writer and has a romantic interest in KK, also a writer like her. This arrangement, forced on a conventional family by a non-conformist daughter, is disturbed when the old woman, the materfamilias, disappears one night. Simultaneously, Bade retires and has to shift to a flat in the city. Beti takes charge of her mother when she returns after a few days. She seems comfortable with her non-conformist daughter, and in this new environment, forms a bond with a transgender named Rosie.

Rosie is the cover for Amma to coax Bade to get her a passport. Rosie has died but Amma thinks she/he has gone to Pakistan, from where she/he had migrated. The family wants to humour the old woman. The passport is prepared.

Amma has a secret she has not shared with the rest of her family. In pre-Partition days, she had married her Muslim lover, Anwar, under the Special Marriages Act. The Partition had put an end to that romance, but she had an itch to go and search for her old flame and finally located him somewhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Her rebellious daughter had a passport. Amma had taken her along and the two women crossed the Wagah border without a visa.

After touching base with old neighbours in Lahore, Amma finally reaches the badlands of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the Pakistani authorities in chase, as by then it was known that two suspicious women were wandering around the country without visas. As the story develops, the head of the immigration cell that finally traces the women is Anwar’s son! The official contrives to get the old woman, presently detained by the immigration authorities, to meet her childhood lover but shoots Amma when she is retracing her steps to the place she and her daughter were confined.

The author’s philosophical take on the love between the Muslim man and the Hindu girl and her take on the artificial barriers erected by redrawing the borders would be abhorrent to the ideology of the present regime. I am not surprised that the book is anathema to the powers that be.

Its message is just too loud and strident for the Sangh Parivar. If people read the book in Hindi, it may affect their sensibilities, particularly of those who were staunch supporters, but were greatly disturbed by the release of the 11 men convicted of rape and murder of women and children in Gujarat. Their grand reception in the village was not taken kindly even by many supporters of the Parivar.

No setback seems to affect Modi’s charisma or his popularity! The economic downturn, rising prices, unemployment, all factors that cause governments to tumble, all such misfortunes are like water off a duck’s back. But the immorality of freeing the 11 convicted of rape and murder has done what others could not. It showed the Parivar, the party and its leaders in a poor light. Many supporters seem to have suffered second thoughts. How can anyone be so callous, said they. Even if the innocent victims belong to another religion? What the convicts did was just not human and they did not deserve to be treated so kindly. They did not merit a public reception which was accorded to them and filmed.

A book like Tomb of Sand will add to the regime’s discomfort. The Catholic Church had something called an ‘Index’. Every book or piece of writing that offended the teachings of the Church would be placed on the Index. Any Catholic who dared to disobey this fiat did so on the pain of committing a mortal sin. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was one such book that was on the Index. I decided to commit a mortal sin!

Lady Chatterley, the sex-starved wife of an invalid lord of the manor, one day saw the caretaker of the estate bathing outside his hut. She was sexually aroused. There was a hint of an extra-marital affair. Compared to the shenanigans of Sonali Phogat, who chose Goa for her escapade, Lady Chatterley was an angel. Yet, she got on the Index, which, incidentally, no Catholic of my acquaintance even mentions these days.

The Parivar will also change its rigid ideas with the passage of time. If it opens its door to more young women, like Sonali Phogat, it will willy-nilly have to revise its attitude to changes in cultural mores. Till then, a book like Tomb of Sand needs to be put on an imaginary Index!

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