Sleeping On Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
“Spotlight” garnered the best picture and best original
screenplay award at the Oscars. And
rightly so, mainly for its content. It
portrays case stories followed by investigative journalist team of The Boston
Globe, ‘Spotlight’, into the child sex-abuse by Roman Catholic priests. In a similar vein, Anuradha Roy’s ‘Sleeping on
Jupiter’ was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015, and it won the DSC
prize for literature this year. The author delineates a predatory account of
the Spiritual Gurus in ashrams in temple towns of India. Sexual energy is
forceful, demonic and all consuming. It
overrides other human qualities of virtue, aesthetics, compassion and empathy.
The story is told in first person by Nomi and by an
omniscient narrator who between them, bring alive a whole set of characters and
a temple town Jarmuli near the sea. Nomita Frederiksen is an
assistant documentary film maker who has decided to come to Jarmuli to unearth
nightmarish dreams which prey on her at night. She is in search of her mother who had
abandoned her to the boat people near the open sea as a little girl and an
ashram with its charismatic Guru who had visited horror and cruelty on her and
her orphaned girlfriends in the name of security and love.
Interwoven into the
fictionalized fabric are the fleshed out portrayals of three conventional old women
– Gauri, Latika and Vidya , who are on a holiday to Jarmuli and are grappling
with their conservative lifestyles and cultural ethos. Pulled in both
directions, they do entertain thoughts of freedom and escape from the shackles
of traditional beliefs and customs. On the other hand, Badal, their temple
guide struggles with his feelings of same-sex love with Raghu. Teaming with Nomi, Suraj, the photographer,
has his own demons to decipher and contend with.
Johnny Toppo, the tea stall man on the beach, is the Wise man
in the story who has come to terms with good and evil in life and sings while
at work. He refuses to be drawn into the darkness of past and memory, a space
that Nomi at 25 years of age still desperately struggles with. She wants concrete answers which the mysteries
of life do not allow her. Interspersed
with her present endeavours at Jarmuli, she reconstructs the ashram of the past
with dark colours and demonic characters perpetuating cruel deeds on innocent
minds.
The author also juxtaposes violence and misogyny with the
pursuit of sexual fulfilment. Insatiate
desires or denial lead the men to heap abuses and physical punishment on their
women and children. A history rich in erotic paintings and sculptures in
temples perpetuates child abuse and suppresses sexual drives of women. A society which sanctions man and his desires
stands in staunch denial when it comes to the question of women and their right
to be as they are.
Anuradha paints stark and strong imagery in her writing.
“Everyone said Guruji was God. Now she knew they were right. She stayed awake
for most of the night with the fruit next to her pillow. She did not know when
she fell asleep. In the morning, the fruit’s pulp was like blood on her sheets.
Dark red.” Visceral feelings surface
with deft stokes of color. “She patted
the camel’s side and said,’Go! Run!Far! You’re free now!’ The camel didn’t
move. It hung its head looking too weary to take another step. The girl pushed
the camel, ‘Shoo, go ....before they come back. It’s your life.’ The camel stood its ground. It had never heard
these words before, nor the tone of voice. Then it took one tentative step to
the left, and then another. Above her, the sky is opal.”
The author also contrasts backgrounds of characters and
their ultimate leanings. Nomi, in spite
of her traumatizing past and ghosts in her psyche, strives for sanity–
unraveling and groping through her darkness. Suraj, on the other hand, who comes from a
middle class Indian family, the boy with a beautiful face “Suraj in the Sun” has
a broken marriage behind me. Dopey-eyed
and degenerate, he meets his nemesis in the end – forever engulfed in the
darkness of the waves and Nomi rides the waves to a better future in the north
– Norway where her foster family lives. Fate
plays its own tune irrespective of earthly contexts.
Humor enters the book through the three women and their
doings during their stay at Jarmuli. “ Every year that passed seemed to make Gouri
more plump. Her limbs were spindly, but her torso was a mound, a pumpkin
perched on matchsticks. It was a small miracle she didn’t topple. Then she
noticed a man selling tea in clay cups. She could not remember when she had
last had tea smelling of rain. She told herself she would get at least three
cups right away, to make up ; she was certain she wanted to drink three cups.”
But the overriding factor that holds the reader is the searing
lyrical prose through which the author successfully unmasks the hidden face of
Indian spirituality, the treacherous hypocrisy of sexual abuse in India. Where
women still fast for the lives of their husbands, but are exploited by men even
before they reach puberty. Spiritualism and religion demands sacrifices from women,
they are here to give pleasure, or the only other way they can survive is as Goddesses,
the earthly incarnate being the ever sacrificing motherly women. The story also
provides them another alternative – of an escape to the west to be able to live
a more humanly normal life.
“And that is why we read fiction at all”
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