Emma and her friend Teddy are Americans visiting a forest reserve in southern India, to make a wildlife documentary about an innovative method of reuniting lost or injured baby elephants with their mothers. Manu, the younger son of a rice farmer, is drawn into the alluring world of ivory hunting following the death of his cousin by a rogue elephant. After being orphaned by poachers and kept in captivity and worked as a temple elephant, the Gravedigger has escaped his chains and is causing havoc in the villages on the edge of the forest. Through these three strands, Tania James tells an engaging and moving story of the conflicting interests in nature conservation. It’s testament to her talent as a writer that it is possible to feel sympathy for each of the flawed characters in this novel, even when none of them come out particularly well – except maybe the elephant who is, after all, just being an elephant.
For the past few years, I’ve been assisting with a storytelling walk on the theme of the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesh. So you can imagine that this book would appeal to me, especially when it encompasses a lovely account of the myth of the elephant graveyard that begins with the elephants having wings, as well as a possible explanation for the popularity of Ganesh (p171):
so the animal that primitive man most feared was the tusker with the broken tooth. These were the angriest, most irritated creatures, most prone to very violent episodes. So why do you think primitive man chose to worship Ganesh, an elephant with a broken tooth? Because fear and worship are two sides of one coin.
And – too much information? – since my interest in toilets stems partly from a few months spent in India, I was delighted that this novel also featured the real rural Indian’s suspicion of indoor lavatories.
so the animal that primitive man most feared was the tusker with the broken tooth. These were the angriest, most irritated creatures, most prone to very violent episodes. So why do you think primitive man chose to worship Ganesh, an elephant with a broken tooth? Because fear and worship are two sides of one coin.
And – too much information? – since my interest in toilets stems partly from a few months spent in India, I was delighted that this novel also featured the real rural Indian’s suspicion of indoor lavatories.
| There are no elephants in the temple that features prominently in Anuradha Roy’s third novel, but there is a young filmmaker with another agenda. Nomi was orphaned by a brutal attack on the village neither she nor the reader knows much about. But she can remember arriving by boat to live in an ashram aged about seven, before being fostered in Norway in her teens. Now in her mid-twenties, she arrives in the temple resort of Jarmulu, ostensibly to research a documentary, but also to tie up loose ends from the past. But, like many abuse victims who haven’t yet been able to tell their stories, Nomi isn’t aware just how vulnerable she is, and the memories and subsequent disorientation leave her at risk. |  |
Interspersed with Nomi’s narrative are the stories of the characters with whom she interacts. Suraj, whom she has employed to assist with her research, is full of self-pity for his failure to fulfil the original promise of both his career and his marriage, as well as the act of violence that brought the latter to an end. Badal, the reluctant temple guide, lives in fear of his uncle and in thrall to his infatuation with a boy who works at a tea stall on the beach. Meanwhile, the three older women with whom Nomi shared a compartment on the train, fuss and bicker through their first ever shared holiday together, Latika and Vidya alternately frustrated and concerned at the signs of dementia in their friend, Gouri.
Like The Tusk, Sleeping on Jupiter is an eloquent novel about the violence behind the beauty and apparent serenity of India, in this case less about the rape of the environment, but the embedded misogyny, sexual harassment and assault of women and children. Roy casts a critical eye at the religiosity and spiritualism of a culture that permits so many citizens to live in extreme poverty; at the sanctimonious policing of women’s dress around temples adorned with erotic, or even pornographic, carvings; at cultish gurus who use their positions of power to groom girls to become sexual slaves, while being admired by the outside world for their generosity. While the latter has made me wonder exactly what may have been going on behind the scenes in an ashram where I stayed in the mid-1980s, as we’re seeing with the uncovering of sexual abuse by celebrities like Jimmy Savile, this is not a problem specific to India.
The Tusk That Did the Damage is published by Harvill Secker and Sleeping on Jupiter by MacLehose – thanks to each for my review copy. And, although I would have been reading and reviewing these books anyway, I’m pleased to be able to present them as part of #diversedecember, along with These Are the Names and Odysseus Abroad. (And, since it was almost December when I put up my review, I’m linking in The Fishermen too.)
Like The Tusk, Sleeping on Jupiter is an eloquent novel about the violence behind the beauty and apparent serenity of India, in this case less about the rape of the environment, but the embedded misogyny, sexual harassment and assault of women and children. Roy casts a critical eye at the religiosity and spiritualism of a culture that permits so many citizens to live in extreme poverty; at the sanctimonious policing of women’s dress around temples adorned with erotic, or even pornographic, carvings; at cultish gurus who use their positions of power to groom girls to become sexual slaves, while being admired by the outside world for their generosity. While the latter has made me wonder exactly what may have been going on behind the scenes in an ashram where I stayed in the mid-1980s, as we’re seeing with the uncovering of sexual abuse by celebrities like Jimmy Savile, this is not a problem specific to India.
The Tusk That Did the Damage is published by Harvill Secker and Sleeping on Jupiter by MacLehose – thanks to each for my review copy. And, although I would have been reading and reviewing these books anyway, I’m pleased to be able to present them as part of #diversedecember, along with These Are the Names and Odysseus Abroad. (And, since it was almost December when I put up my review, I’m linking in The Fishermen too.)
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