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Novel set in India (the author talks to us about her choice of setting)

22nd August 2015

Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy, novel set in India.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015

IMG_1561As yet I have never been to India, but this book makes me want to book my ticket to “Jarmuli” (wherever that is, see the author’s comments below) and see if I can find the characters portrayed in the book.

Anuradha has a rare talent of allowing the reader to feel that one has met them. The three ladies of a certain age who have travelled to Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea, Gouri, Latika and Vidya who have been friends forever. They protect each other and share the holiday experiences with humour and compassion. Their characters interact with others with interesting developments. Suraj, Badal, Raghu and Johnny Toppo all have their part to play in this sensitive story.

The book centres mainly on Nomi who has travelled to India to try to find answers for what happened to her in the past. The reader is well aware that she has gone through some traumatic and terrible times before being adopted and taken away from the country of her birth. Nomi is trying to piece together some of her distant memories, hoping for answers to the questions that stay in her mind.

Anuradha writes with compassion, as if always aware of sensitivities of the reader, when dealing with subjects that could offend and upset.

If you enjoy a book with a difference, one that makes you think, then this is a book you will enjoy.

KAGA for the TripFiction Team

The author talks to use about her choice of setting…

Jarmuli is a made-up place: you won’t find it on a map and you won’t be able to visit it. Those who read the book closely find the passage that describes its location on India’s coastline and start guessing games. But the truth is that that are quite a few places in India that are like parts of Jarmuli: towns with massive temples by the sea, or inland, or villages with a cluster of stone-carved shrines.

Many years ago, I went to one such small place, Khajuraho, in central India. It is nowhere near the sea and of its many temples only one was still worshipped at. The rest were archaeological monuments. Some of these were shaded by giant old trees, and there was nothing around them other than a couple of cupboard shops that sold crude little brass versions of the erotic sculpture on the temple walls. And a few paces distant was a restaurant serving fizzy drinks and crepes with syrup, run by a middle-aged Swiss woman who had somehow washed up in the middle of India and never gone back.

You could while away most of the day in that half-empty restaurant’s terrace eating and listening to parakeets screeching in the trees, then wandering back to the shrines to eavesdrop on guides doing the rounds with tourists. Their explanation for the eroticism of the sculpture changed with their clients: to Indians who appeared devout they said everything was ‘maya’: all that sex on the walls was illusion. When showing foreigners around they provided a certain amount of lascivious speculation about what a particular stone woman or man was getting up to in a particular panel.

I suppose some of this fed into the Jarmuli of my imagining: but I wanted my temple town to be ocean-bound, and I wanted it to have a sun temple too. There are many places in India with sun temples, none of them, as far as I know, has one rising out of the water, as mine does. Fictional towns are good places for my fictional people, I can make them exactly what I want them to be. Even when I did set a book in a real place, Ranikhet, I found myself changing it.

But, as with characters, it’s not as if you wouldn’t find places similar to Jarmuli if you tried. The most obvious parallels are Puri and Rameswaram, both monumental temple towns by the sea. They are still centres of pilgrimage for Hindus and have an atmosphere quite removed from the laid-back hedonism common to most beach resorts. Expect to find lots of pilgrims and few swimsuits and bikinis if you go there. Also expect, quite often, to be turned away from temple doors if you are not Hindu. Not many temples forbid non-Hindus, but some do. It’s best to check before travelling; or else go to places such as Khajuraho or the Sun Temple at Konarak, which have temples that are no longer used for worship. These are off the standard tourist trails of India that begin at the Taj Mahal and end at a spa in Kerala, but are memorable in a completely different way.

Thank you to Anuradha. You can follow Anuradha Roy via her blog.

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