Why Orbital can be your next read: Find your place in the ‘waltzing ballroom' of the universe

Indian Express

4 days ago

With the safe return of astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and the Axiom crew to Earth this week, space travel has dominated the news and social media. So today's column is on Orbital, a book about six astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). The astronauts conduct their experiments and observe the 'universe unfold in simple eternities', as they loop round and round the earth 16 times a day.
Orbital, by English author Samantha Harvey, won the Booker Prize last year, and as you start reading this slim book, it is easy to see why. Harvey describes the 'theatre and opera' of the planets waltzing in the 'ballroom' of the universe, the 'feral and primal panther' that is 'raw space', with scientific precision and poetic lyricism. Have you ever seen a sunset and felt wonder expand within? Looked at the moon and felt an inexplicable pull? Harvey gives beautifully competent words to that awe and fascination we have all experienced.
In terms of plot or character development, nothing really happens in the book. We get a few pencil strokes of the astronauts' lives and backgrounds, but Harvey does not get into details. Six people stuck in an aircraft for nine months could be the scene for immense drama and conflict, but our astronauts — two Russian men, an English woman, an Italian man, a Japanese woman, and an American man — are team players, disciplined soldiers of science.
What makes the book worth reading are the eyes the astronauts — and Harvey — see the universe through. Her language has exultation, contemplation, philosophy, and a buoyant hope that touches and uplifts.
The book is essentially a still life of 'humans in space'; Harvey herself has called it 'space pastoral'. Space travel has gone from being science fiction to an almost mundane activity. Harvey gives us the 'inside story' of something we read about in terms of launches and splashdowns, records and figures.
Harvey has no background as an astronaut, and you can wonder why go to her to read about something enough scientists have written about. But that is the beauty and indispensability of fiction. Harvey humanises the astronauts — their rigorous training, their punishing loneliness, and yet their unconquerable elation — with the scope and flight of imagination that a novel allows, and a scientific journal must suppress.
What it tells us about our lives
Orbital is a short book, but I would not call it a 'quick read'. The paragraphs demand attention to fully appreciate their depth and beauty.
The astronauts live inside a cramped aircraft, where their limbs are craving gravity to resist. They miss their families, the simple pleasures of walking, or seeing an animal, or holding their loved ones. But outside, a magnificent, magical universe upholds. A typhoon roars towards the Philippines. Climate change alters the earth's face. Another set of astronauts have just left for the moon, outstripping these six. They never lose sight of any of this.
Similarly, we sometimes tend to live inside our problems — a job not going well, a bad relationship, a health scare — to such an extent that it blinds us to the larger life around us. No matter how all-encompassing a problem seems right now, the sun still rises, people love our smiles, there are pleasures we can give our mind and body, terrible suffering is all over the world, and it is important to not lose sight of all this.
Then there are the lessons on gaze and scale. The scientists live inside their minds, inside the aircraft, and in the vastness of space. They are observing the whole universe, even as the ground crew observes them all the time. They are also observing each other.
We too live in mirrors that reflect each other, inhabiting our inner worlds, the worlds we share with family, with friends, at the workplace, and the larger world. Orbital teaches us to hold together these various paradoxes, pulls and pushes.
The book has many ruminations on the earth's place in the universe and our own place in all of this, and one stood out for me. 'Maybe human civilisation is like a single life — we grow out of the royalty of childhood into supreme normality; we find out about our own unspecialness….if we're not special then we might not be alone.' As babies, we are the centre of attention, we are told we are special, the best thing in the world. Most of us grow up to realise we are quite ordinary. And that should really be a comforting thought. We are perfectly average people free to make lasting bonds with other average people and together admire the extraordinary life we are blessed with.
What it tells us about the world
First, of course, is what it literally tells us about the world, what the astronauts observe. The border between India and Pakistan is so brightly lit that it is among the few international boundaries visible from the ISS. The mangroves of Mumbai are disappearing. Human greed is distorting the entire planet.
The book also makes an interesting point about how space travel itself is changing. The six astronauts here are dedicated to the cause of science. They diligently take their blood and urine samples, record their moods, their sleep, because they realise that they, too, are data, part of the experiments they conduct. Their experiences will be studied to improve space travel.
In this way, their reasons for going to space are very different from a billionaire's jaunt on a spaceship. When a journalist asks one of the astronauts, Shaun, to comment on how the moon mission is writing 'humanity's future', he repeats the question to his colleague, Pietro. Pietro answers, 'With the gilded pens of billionaires, I guess.'
Shaun also starts formulating a response to the journalist's email, and his reply at once sounds polished, artificial, in deep contrast to the raw musings of six intelligent humans we had read so far. The way the line stands out reminds us of how our public conversations are sanitised, generic, while our intimate ramblings are much more alive.
The one part of the book I found jarring is where it comments on politics. Broadly, the premise is that from space, borders between countries are invisible and it is easy to forget about politics. Harvey insists this is 'not naivety'. But if the author needs to tell this to us separately, instead of showing it through the characters' thoughts, their contemplations do seem naïve.
The best books leave us with interesting points to ponder long after we are done with them. For me, one such point in Orbital is when it talks about the creation of Earth. Two views of two astronauts are contrasted: 'Look … where solar systems and galaxies are violently scattered … What made that but some heedless hurling beautiful force?'…'What made that but some heedful hurling beautiful force?'
Is all great creation a random, beautiful, act of various factors just clicking together? Or does creation demand a powerful, violent, but ultimately benign force, a god? What do you think?
See you after 15 days,
Yours Literary,
Yashee
[e-mail]
P.S: If you love books, write to me with what work I should discuss next. If you are not a reader of novels, follow along, and maybe you will begin to delight in the wonder and wisdom, the practical value, and the sheer joy of fiction.
Yashee is an Assistant Editor with the indianexpress.com, where she is a member of the Explained team. She is a journalist with over 10 years of experience, starting her career with the Mumbai edition of Hindustan Times. She has also worked with India Today, where she wrote opinion and analysis pieces for DailyO. Her articles break down complex issues for readers with context and insight.
Yashee has a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from Presidency College, Kolkata, and a postgraduate diploma in journalism from Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, one of the premier media institutes in the countr
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