Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree says people wrongly think they can change course of history

Mysore/Mysuru: The Sixth Season of the Mysuru Literature Festival that was inaugurated last afternoon at Hotel Southern Star on Vinoba Road had an interesting session where Booker Prize-winning author Geetanjali Shree dwelled upon translation and its inner ramifications. The festival is being organised by Mysuru Literary Forum Charitable Trust and Mysuru Book Clubs-2015.

Geetanjali Shree, the 65-year-old author from New Delhi, made literary history when her Hindi novel, ‘Ret Samadhi’ — translated into English by Vermont-based Daisy Rockwell as ‘Tomb of Sand’ — won the 2022 International Booker Prize for Translated Fiction.

Set in North India, this is the first novel originally written in “any Indian language” to receive the prestigious honour meant for “the finest single work of fiction from around the world which has been translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and Ireland.”

Geetanjali Shree was in conversation with Sita Bhaskar. She said that the translation of the title doesn’t resonate with the idea of Samadhi.

“Nothing ever dies but goes into Samadhi. I don’t agree with the translation of the title of the book ‘Ret Samadhi’ into ‘Tomb of Sand’. A tomb cannot be a Samadhi. All that goes into Samadhi improves and re-emerges after some time. Some people think that they can kill some thoughts or ideologies and can change the course of history. But, it is only temporary,” she said.

Comparing the title of her book with current happenings in India, she went on to say that ‘Samadhi’ is a transformational aspect rather than just an end. A translation isn’t a different book but the same in a different form. Yes, English is an advantage so also it makes you lose something original. Inanimate objects play a great part in literature when words become inadequate,” she said.

On theatre, the author said that theatre taught her the redundancy of words. “Though English played a pivotal role in my life acting as a link language, it also restrained me from learning other Indian languages,”    she added. Describing a family as the centre of ‘Ret Samadhi’, she said that family is a microcosm of everything that goes on in the world. “All political and sociological tensions of the world are reflected in a family,” she added.