Physics and pheromones. There is a fine and fragile line between the two for the protagonist of Abha Dawesar's second novel, Babyji. 16 year old Anamika Sharma, on the surface, appears mature to the point of smugness, responsible and fiercely intelligent. She is the top student in her class with a penchant for physics, often applying its theories to situations in her personal life. She is also head prefect of her school, admired by her teachers and both feared and respected by her peers. Anamika enjoys this sense of power-the power of responsibility and the power of possessing knowledge. Underneath this veneer of propriety and responsibility, however, lies an adolescent angst which one could describe as "Lolitaesque". Dawesar throws the reader headfirst into Anamika's world of reckless passion, where lovers are multiple, all women, and of different social strata and age.

While trying to satiate her sexual hunger through her maid, her classmate and an attractive divorcee, 16-year old Anamika also tries to dismantle and rearrange the social structure she has been thrust into in modern day urban India. Anamika is full of questions that have no "right" answer: what is love? what are the boundaries of love? what does it mean to live life fully? what is the purpose of one's life? She looks at those who have a life of privilege and those who do not and seems to sense that sex/love is an overriding factor that actually binds the divided classes. What most of us would equate in terms of chemistry and emotions, Anamika equates in physics through action and consequence, eventually wondering if one can contain and quantify life's experiences. In the beginning of the book, Anamika equates her first feelings of love/sexual attraction to Isaac Newton's Eureka moment:

I had imagined so many times how Newton must have felt when the apple dropped on his head and the weight of gravitational forces clicked into place. I fancied I felt that way, that a great discovery had been made, and all I had to do was write down its formula. I wished a simple object like an apple had been involved, something tangible that I could contemplate and hold, smell and bite.

To all of this Dawesar adds the backdrop of the Mandal report, issued by the Government of India in the late 1980's, and its ensuing tensions betweens India's upper and lower castes, making Babyji an ambitious attempt at societal introspection among other things .

Babyji comes across as a smart, sassy, kick-in-the-mouth book. It is written in first person in a strong, detailed, honest voice. Dawesar's style seems to be dictated by her protagonist and for that reason, the book reads very fast. Through the eyes of a burgeoning adult, Delhi and its inhabitants are questioned and captured at their grimy, elitist, double-standard, cosmopolitan best and worst, albeit with certain stereotypes. For example, Anamika's lesbian tendencies appear to be predisposed by her alleged manliness/tom boyishness. She splashes Old Spice cologne, wears boys' shirts and jeans, sports the virulent roughness of a boy in the way she rides her cycle everywhere, in the way she acts out sexually, and in the way she matter-of-factly interacts with adults. Even her lover's son can't help but ask Anamika "Are you a Didi or a Bhaiya?" Then there is the low caste boy who always creates trouble, the idea of America as an educational haven, and the whole notion of sex mixed with glamour, power and perfection.

My main gripe with Babyji, however, is the hollowness in Anamika's relationship with others and how resolution is only through her eyes, her goodness. Somehow everyone seems attracted to Anamika - Anamika's best friend, who is a boy; the class beauty queen who Anamika's best friend supposedly has a crush on; the class bully/bad boy from a lower caste; Anamika's best friend's father; a high society divorced woman...you get my point. Everyone wants Anamika, in their own way, and somehow that puts pressure on Anamika to help them, and to somehow redeem herself, whether it is her maid's abusive husband, whether it is her divorced friend's son who can't get admission, whether it's Charka Dev, the low caste yadav who is constantly in trouble and misunderstood, or Anamika's friends who vie for her affection and trust.

While this may have been the intent of the author - to show how one can think the world revolves around them and on realization of that, to cultivate a more global, universal perspective, be it through Anamika's sexual coming of age, her testing of the laws of physics, her struggle in trying to make the intangible more tangible - Dawesar lays out too many challenges for her protagonist in too narrow an environment. Anamika's world is drawn out just enough, so that all of the people in her life come across as caring yet lost. No one is bad, but no one is exceptional. Everyone has problems, regardless of caste/class, even if they are of a pretentious sort. In the end, however, it all seems relative - Anamika, her problems, the environment around her, and yes, even this reader's experience. Babyji is a well-written book, an absorbing book, an unusual book, but one which neither moved me enough nor taught me something new.

Book Description: Sexy, surprising, and subversively wise, Babyji is the story of Anamika Sharma, a spirited student growing up in Delhi. At school she is an ace at quantum physics. At home she sneaks off to her parents' scooter garage to read the Kamasutra. Before long she has seduced an elegant older divorcèe and the family servant, and has caught the eye of a classmate coveted by all the boys. With the world of adulthood dancing before her, Anamika confronts questions that would test someone twice her age.