Death and Life in the Bordersand: On the Queer Remembrance of Partition through Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand

Abstract

This essay reads Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand as a radical queer remembrance of Partition at the conjuncture of its 75th anniversary. By coining “bordersand,” where “sand” takes “land’s” place, I highlight the symbolic role that sand plays both in queering the inarticulate space of death, chronicling human connections from milliseconds to billions of years, and demonstrating a universal empathy to the trans/gression of borders. My reading of the novel engages with feminist historiography, making queer kin, and hauntology, showcasing how Shree de-localizes the responsibility of remembering Partition as a nation-state-based interest. To a broader audience interested in tackling the limits of archive and the folly of treating state and tribal violence as an aberrant moment in the history of democracy, Shree exemplifies the use of creative narrative techniques—such as a “second act” for the silenced subaltern—to rewrite the experiences of mass disappearance and displacement caused by global structural violence.