Reconstructing the Partition Hi(story): Between Sincerity and Satire in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi)

Ravinder Kumar

Published in Literary Oracle — Vol.8, Issue I, May 2024

Keywords: Credulous Metafiction, Metamodern, New-sincerity, Partition, Post-irony

Abstract:

This research paper positions Geetanjali Shree’s International Booker Prize winner Hindi-language novel Ret Samadhi (2018), translated into English Tomb of Sand (2022) by Daisy Rockwell, as a metamodern text and tries to pitch the idea that this novel redraws partition boundaries illustrated in the Indian partition literature. This novel develops postmodern irony and metafiction into David Foster Wallace’s brainchild Post-Irony and Lee Konstantinou’s idea of Credulous Metafiction to establish new sincerity in Indian partition literature. An octogenarian grandmother, Ma or Amma, wishes to visit Pakistan and eventually not only succeeds in visiting her ancestral home in Lahore but also offers a new understanding of India’s partition and boundaries between the two nations. The novel views India’s partition tragedy from a metamodern perspective of oscillation between a modern enthusiasm and postmodern irony and portrays the partition as painful as it was in past or as alleviative as it can become at present. Selfreflexive irony in the novel constantly proposes new meanings of partition trauma highlighted in Ma’s vagaries with a unique narrative strategy agglutinating the stories of modern urban life, history, folklore, environment, and womanhood with the main story. How a contemporary story on India’s partition oscillates [Vermeulen and Van Den Akkar] between modern and postmodern interpretations of displacement seeking candour and authenticity with the help of its self-referential metafiction dubbed as ‘Credulous Metafiction’ by Lee Konstantinou to locate NewSincerity [Adam Kelly] in partition literature is the major point discussed in this paper.

https://doi-ds.org/doilink/06.2024-33826975/LiteraryOracle/2024/V8/I1/A11