Sleeping on Jupiter - Anuradha Roy

One of the books I read recently was the DSC award winner for 2016, Anuradha Roy’s “Sleeping on Jupiter”.  Former DSC award winners include Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland. Complimented by it  being a long list nominee of the Man Booker, I felt that it could be a worthy read, thus  my choosing it to read.  

Upon completing it, I must confess that the resulting feelings are somewhat a mixed bag.  But I suspect that my  judgement is somewhat prejudiced, in what the traditionalist within me would expect out of a book. True that it is written in beautiful language. True that it has so many strands of intrigue simultaneously kept alive, and that they are interwoven adequately, if at a time predictably,  to make the book quite a page turner. Yet,  considerable strands remain loose ends by the time I finished reading the last page. Thus, what we encounter is experiences of a half a dozen or more people, over ten days or so ; plus glimpses into past. Nomi who is trying to come to terms with her life, torn apart early in life due to political violence and abuse at a Hindu Ashram where she’s brought to seek refuge;  The ladies in their sixties (Vidya, Latika, Gauri ), past their days of  responsibilities as mothers, but each encountering their own battles – Dementia, dead husbands, unfaithful husbands, bygone successes, bygone affairs ; the young man Badal living a hard life after his father’s death, and whose main immediate goal in life is to win over a young man whom he desires; the middle aged man, Suraj the professional cameraman, his life in total disarray, trying hard to find a path of sanity. Amongst these many characters what is abundant is the essential quality of restlessness, that of each fighting their battles, the sense of insecurity and isolation  that pervades most people in modern times. I felt that it is these feelings that Roy wanted to emphasize and draw attention to. It is this life within life that they seek while they go through the motions of their daily lives. Within these 250 or so pages, it is these characters, all with a past, all journeymen, all unsure what tomorrow will bring them or where they want to go with their lives. The experiences of these people certainly have the grains for a wonderful novel with an interesting plot – yet, that mayn’t have been the authoresses’ reckoning. Thus my verdict (if I may use such a strong term) to identify this book as one  with many loose ends, which never gets tied up. For example how  the crimes that took place at the Ashram were exposed, other than the possible role that Nomi played to expose it – that itself is not a fact, for it is unlikely that the revelations by a helpless girl will bring to law the highly connected and the influential priests, sadhus and monks. Another example is the fate of Gauri - what happens to her. May be it is the authoresses way of arguing for a continuation of chaos in the lives of these characters. 

Hence it is but a traditional reader, expecting a near complete story, with his innate prejudices about a story line reaching a reasonable completion, who is left somewhat out in the cold as the book ends. He calls it a “good-to-very good book” ( three and a half stars ), where a more educated or more modern reader may call it a very good book awarding  it four stars. It is in this particular sense that I would appreciate the responses about  this book, by those who have read this already and those who plan to read it. To those who plan to read I can guarantee that this book is indeed an intriguing one – albeit an incomplete one – but then maybe that’s my prejudice at play. Tell you what ? Read it and tell me whether I am. To paraphrase the title of a classic George Michael album – “Read without Prejudice” , and tell me about the book, and that will tell me something about my prejudices about what I expect from a book.