Jarmuli radiated outward to Asia, the world, the solar system, the universe – it was every child's incantation in school, and even now, when he wanted to be out of the reach of his aunt and uncle, he dreamed of living on Jupiter and sleeping under its many moons.Sleeping on Jupiter begins with an emotional gutpunch: An idyllic day of picking fruit with her brother in their jungle yard is shattered for Nomi, forever frozen in her mind as before.
When the pigs were slaughtered for their meat they shrieked with a sound that made my teeth fall off and this was the sound I heard soon after my mother cut the grapefruit, and the men came in with axes.An attack, an escape, and a desperate run towards the sea in her mother's arms is all the little girl remembers of the day that led to her (and a dozen other “boat girls”) eventually ending up in an ashram near the fictional temple town of Jarmuli, under the protection of a Guru revered by Westerners as a wizard and a deity. As Guruji explains to Nomi at their first meeting, “I am your father and your mother now. I am your country. I am your teacher. I am your God.” While Nomi is safe at last from the ersatz soldiers who would ransack a jungle village or burn and loot an orphanage, not all monsters announce their true selves with axe and torch.
Fast forward two decades and Nomi is a documentary filmmaker, returning to India for the first time since she was twelve. As her train pulls out of the Calcutta station, we meet her compartment mates; three old Indian women on a last hurrah vacation together before their children lock them away for their own protection, for good. When Nomi leaves the train during a stop and has a fraught encounter with some local men just as the train is pulling away, the old women can only watch helplessly and regard with ironic detachment the broken emergency pull cord beside their compartment's dirty window. What could they do, after all, to help a young woman who would put herself in such danger?
As all four of these women were heading for Jarmuli, it's unsurprising that their paths would eventually cross (often without them even realising it), and thematically, they are all on a similar quest to recover lost memories and follow emotional fragments to their sources. Along the way we meet: a priestly temple guide who is struggling with both the legacy of being orphaned and an unrequited love; an aged tea seller who sings love songs to remember his happier past; a violent drunkard who resents the loss of his wife; and an adolescent (probably orphaned and homeless?) boy who must do what he can to survive. Just as the nearby temple attracts hordes of pilgrims, so too does Jarmuli attract every sort of souvenir hawker, ripoff tour operator, and hopeful beggar, and this noisy, dirty blend of the sacred and the profane seems to symbolise the author's view of modern India.
Through flashback scenes, we eventually learn: the childhood events that force the grownup Nomi to sleep fitfully in a barricade of blankets and pillows; why she would armour herself against others with crazy hair and clothes and piercings; and why she had eventually been brought to Norway by a foster mother she could never bring herself to become close with. Yet while Nomi's story is often tragic, I didn't really connect emotionally with her and it' s hard to put my finger on what's missing.
The writing in Sleeping on Jupiter is by turns lyrical and spare and scenes often felt cut short; indeed, at 250 smallish pages, this isn't an in-depth book at all. With there being so many newspaper stories lately of the rape and murder of Indian women – and the men who go unpunished for these crimes – it is timely for author Anuradha Roy to write about the subservient role that women play in Indian society. But while, on the one hand, there are scenes about bare-chested men telling women to dress more modestly to enter the temple or the observance of a fast day for women (to find a husband or to ensure his health), there is also the sad history of the men: the orphaned Badal, beaten and used by his uncle; Raghu used by everyone; Jugnu beaten and thrown into the sea. What happened at the ashram seems to be a story of the exploitation of the powerless, not necessarily a gender-related act. This might be primarily Nomi's story, but she's not the only victim, and the fact that the three old ladies are happy and comfortable argues against the idea of lifelong mistreatment.
I did enjoy this book (except for some unnecessary connections between characters), but since I can't help but mentally compare it to some big and sprawling India-set epics, it feels a little lightweight in the end. Even so, Sleeping on Jupiter feels like it does fit on this year's Man Booker longlist and I was intrigued to have encountered a new and interesting voice. I would give this 3.5 stars if I could and am rounding down against the rest of the Bookers.
Man Booker Longlist 2015:
Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have a Family
Anne Enright - The Green Road
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings
Laila Lalami - The Moor's Account
Tom McCarthy - Satin Island
Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen
Andrew O’Hagan - The Illuminations
Marilynne Robinso - Lila
Anuradha Roy - Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways
Anna Smaill - The Chimes
Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread
Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
I was really pleased that A Brief History of Seven Killings took the prize; even more pleased that it didn't go to A Little Life as seemed inevitable.
