Navigating Space, Place, and Society: A GeoHumanities Perspective on Transgression in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand

Abstract

This research explores the social dynamics of space in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (2021), originally published as Ret Samadhi, and translated into English by Daisy Rockwell. Tomb of Sand revolves around Ma, an eighty year old woman, who rises from a deep trance as new and develops a taste for transgression. The objective of this research essay is to evaluate the social implications of animation of places like doors, thresholds, boundaries, and walls in the novel, and to analyse the role of spatial dimension in the transgressive activities of characters. The research is significant in that it highlights the treatment of space as a physical entity that has a cognition of its own. The paper argues that the places in the novel are alive due to their social soul, and they put forth the ideologies and thoughts of the prominent actors who inhabit them. Places, therefore, become indicators of characters’ transgression since they represent the social expectations with regards to gender, age or class. For instance, the door of Bade’s home (in the text under scrutiny) “knows that it must remain open” as he has a responsibility towards every social class as a civil servant. However, the case is different for Beti whose departure from Bade’s home is viewed as a sign of transgression. This research employs the concept of place by Tim Cresswell in his book In Place/ Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and transgression (1996). Appropriating the tools of interpretive phenomenological analysis of the text, the research contributes to the interdisciplinary domain of GeoHumanities.

Keywords

• animation
• cognition
• geohumanities
• transgression