She walks down the pathway, dusk soaks her, she becomes a black shadow flitting between trees. Overhead, leaves slice the pale sky into slivers. She can hear herself breathe, hear her shoes crunching earth. She steps through brambles that claw at her jeans. She smells marsh rosemary and woodsmoke. It is more light than dark, more dark than light, as is usual on midsummer nights this close to the Arctic. As she is thinking this, all at once before her is the sheet of silver that she has dreamed of before sleeping every night these many years. When she reaches the clearing she slips her jacket’s hood off and arches her back. The beads and the braids are gone. Her hair is cut so short that her head is a fuzzy bud on a thin stem. The rings in her ears catch the light.
She shrugs her backpack off her shoulders and for a long time sits by the water, chin resting on her knees. When it is almost light she slips out of her clothes. She slides into the lake, gasps at the first chill of it, starts swimming towards the centre. When she can no longer make out the shore, she comes to a stop and floats on her back in the shining water. She is a leaf, the water can take her where it will. The air is warm against her skin. She is barely moving, eyes on the stars until they start to fade. Your mother and your father and your brother have become stars, a woman had said once. Whenever you want to be with them, look up at the sky and there they are.
As daylight stains the grey trees green, she flips over. She swims back to the lakeside, climbs out of the water, dries herself and gets into her clothes. She bends to her backpack, takes from it a small stone statue. She traces its lines with a forefinger, holds it close for a moment, then drops it into the lake’s water. Its ripples widen in the light.
She digs into her backpack again and takes out a rusted metal object that is no more than two narrow bands on a rudimentary spindle. She tests several spots with her feet, plants it into the sodden mulch on the bank. She looks up to orient herself: one side of the opal sky is turning pink. She swivels the spindle until its arrow points north.
Acknowledgements
My mother Sheela Roy and her sister Sunila Rudra were my companions on a research trip for this book. They were game for everything, opened doors to worlds I wouldn’t have known existed, and even thanked me for taking them along.
For their clear-eyed comments and sympathetic reading of drafts, I am indebted to Arundhati Gupta, James Scott Linville, Manishita Dass, and Myriam Bellehigue.
I am grateful to Gina Winje and Karin Marie for help on Norwegian foliage and birdlife. Abhishek Roy for untangling the intricacies of relationships in the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Prateek Jalan for years of keeping me out of trouble, Rajesh Sharma for his unwavering support and interest, and Koukla MacLehose for a peaceful desk by the sea.
For getting the book ready to step out into the world: Katharina Bielenberg, Monica Reyes, Poulomi Chatterji, Thomas Abraham, and Victoria Millar.
Constantly beside me through the writing of this book were John D. Smith’s translation of the Mahabharata and A. K. Ramanujan’s translations of bhakti poetry; the lines in the epigraph are based on a translation by Ramanujan, published in his collection, Speaking of Siva. The snatches of poetry that come back to Gouri are from the Bengali poet Jibanananda Das’ poem “Banalata Sen”, written in 1942.
There are countless horrific cases of child abuse and sexual violence in India. I have drawn on the legal and investigative history of many such incidents; this book is not based on any particular instance.
It is a great sadness that Per Bangsund isn’t around to see where his walks with me in the Norwegian woods led.
ANURADHA ROY won the Economist Crossword Prize for Fiction for her novel The Folded Earth, which was nominated for several other prizes including the Man Asian, the D.S.C., and the Hindu Literary Award. Her first novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, has been widely translated and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and the Seattle Times. She lives in Ranikhet.
Sleeping On Jupiter Page 22