It begins again with an old woman. She might be derelict, like Ma in the early pages of Tomb of Sand, but here, she has already died many deaths and turned to smoke that lingers in the rains.
In a city divided by riots, she wanders like a ghost, haunting this side and that. Detective, murderer, madwoman: floating rumours have made her everything everywhere all at once. The time is cruel. The city is segregated and numbed by profit-making corporations; but merely looking at her turns people into people again.
She appears, out of nowhere, on the rubble of a house being bulldozed, taking account of what is being lost. Or is spotted walking swiftly across the bridge, her cotton pallu flapping like the hawk’s wing. This stubborn woman is memory herself, arriving like a sudden pang as we forget our own histories. Geetanjali Shree’s fiction and Daisy Rockwell’s translation move with the gait and spirit of this budhiya (old woman) in the titular story of their collection — crooked, lurching, springing, bracing.
Stories without borders
Since 2013, Women in Translation Month, observed every August, has celebrated women writers from around the world whose work reaches new readers through translation. It is also a moment to recognise the vital and creative role of translators in bringing diverse voices, cultures and ways of seeing into conversation across borders. With Indian writers such as Geetanjali Shree and Banu Mushtaq receiving international recognition, Indian literature in translation is firmly in the global spotlight, paving the way for many more voices to travel, resonate and be discovered.
Shadow figures
Translated from the Hindi original, Yahan Hathi Rahte The, Shree’s collection of short stories, Once Elephants Lived Here showcases great experimentation with literary form — turning the reader this way and that, playing with words, displacing beginning-middle-end, throwing sounds, sitting under a blooming tree for hours, or roaming in circles around the same place until something shifts.
Strung together by many unforgettable characters, especially a stellar cast of heroines, these stories wring the heart like a wet cloth and send a shudder down the shoulder. A striking line about missing elephants, from the first story, might encapsulate this book best: “Let them go the way of the elephants, wherever they went, with their joyful, lazy gait.” Or maybe a rebellious inclination, that of “an old woman who did what she pleased”.
A shadow becomes a complete character, a shape-shifting thief who strikes fear in the heart of an old man, in ‘These Days’. In a city where Muslims are being persecuted, and terror reigns, this story offers a moving revelation at the end. Shree’s game of withholding personhood in the figure of the shadow makes the story sharp and haunting.
The old father, a dying but domineering patriarch, in ‘The End’ reminds us of the rich descriptions and crafty details that made up Shree’s magnum opus, the International Booker Prize-winning Tomb of Sand (2022), also translated by Rockwell. The story ends with Ma, who speaks little otherwise, but mumbles such words on the father’s passing that they might stay with us longer than his stupidity: “I am free now, free of responsibility, I can go wherever I want.”
Avalanche of emotions
‘Out for a Spin’ bubbles with the narrator’s frustrations, and somewhat hallucinatory repetitions. The spiral of despair, stitched into the form of the story, easily catches hold, and leaves us angry, wanting some air. ‘Butterflies’, an account of young girls training to be nurses in Kerala, is quite confusing for a while. But it is also the most tender, even though it does not resolve the narrator’s feelings or run as fast as the other stories.
‘Echo’ ends in a sentence so elaborate and winding that it snowballs a tiny emotion into an avalanche. The length of a large paragraph, this sentence seethes with the helplessness of a woman who wants to be strong but is weighed down by a history of violence that is as old as centuries, and grows and grows, spreading itself everywhere.
Memorable partnership
Rockwell’s rendering of Shree’s voice fits like a glove. Each noise seems to be coming from its rightful place, and dialogues sit well in the mouths of characters. While the Translator’s Note mentions that ‘So Much Sky’ was the most unusual story in the collection, given its robotic people and a love affair with the sky, the translation conveys the narrator’s love for life and openness brilliantly. She loves the sky, for it is the only thing that offers her true freedom.
And, that long line in ‘Echo’ gives more evidence of the Tomb of Sand magic between writer and translator, which is certainly still alive. This jugalbandi is apparent in English, whether in the rhythm of the tales, in the way meaning floats rather than being overtly stated, or in how a sleight of hand in one language remains mysterious even in the other.
The last few stories have a sense of lightness that is unique. The characters here move with more quietness, but never lack depth. In the end, we are left with many things in our hands, feeling full of life, just like Shree’s fictional women finding their freedom: “Ma, who was seventy, but also a young lady, began to dance beneath the sakura.” We, too, will be found dancing to the writer’s song. And when we return to these lines ages later, we shall find yet another song.
Once Elephants Lived Here
Geetanjali Shree, trs Daisy Rockwell
Penguin Hamish Hamilton
₹599
The reviewer, a poet and translator, teaches at Ashoka University.
Published - August 14, 2026 02:30 pm IST