ANOTHER BORDER, BEYOND THE BORDER: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE WOMAN CHARACTERS IN TOMB OF SAND

Abstract

In the age of digital humanities and post-memory studies, literature records the affective information that is subsumed by the grand narratives of history. In the genre of partition literature fiction explores the domain of unfulfilled possibilities thereby presenting the alternative paths that could have been taken. Geetanjali Shree’s International Booker Prize-winning novel Tomb of Sand explores the journey of an eighty-year-old woman revisiting her childhood home in Pakistan along with her daughter. It is a tale of an individual, who has been de-territorialized, reaching a negotiation with the trauma of partition. This article attempts to analyse the debates on motherhood, identity formation, and gender performance by conducting a critical appreciation of the text. It takes up as its subject the three most dominant woman characters in the novel, Ma, the protagonist; Beti, the daughter; and Rosie, the hijra. In comparing and contrasting the inherent womanhood of the three characters, it also tries to explore the position of women inhabiting the boundaries.