The Author of Baby-Ji
By Anjali Goyal

Born in New Delhi, Abha Dawesar went to study philosopy at Harvard and then started a traditional career in finance. But the banker's life was soon discarded when her books, Miniplanner and then Baby-ji, garnered critical success. In fact, Time Out New York magazine chose Dawesar as 1 of 25 "New Yorkers who will make their mark in 2005."

Baby-ji is a novel about the adventures of Anamika, a sprightly 16-year old Indian girl, as she explores her sexuality. It is surprising at many levels for a South Asian author, not least of which is the candid treatment of one of its main themes: same-sex love. Anamika has affairs with three women - her doting servant Rani, her vulnerable classmate Sheila and the exotic divorcee who first starts Anamika on this journey. The sex scenes are unrestrained and might be shocking to an audience not used to seeing it in South Asian novels. In particular, Anamika's sexual aggression and promiscuity seem to cross the line between teenage experimentation and a disturbing lack of perception about what is right and wrong. But these conflicting tensions, confusing ethics, and rebellious giddiness are explored with the flair and sense of adventure typical of a young teenage life. Dawesar inhabits the voice of Anamika with ease as Anamika maneuvers herself through the world of schoolmates, homework, servants and aunties.

Dawesar is a refreshing new voice amongst South Asian writers, with an assured control over the pace of her writing, and over the emotions of her characters. The liberal sprinkling of passionate same-sex scenes throughout Baby-ji have generated a buzz of their own. Dawesar, quick and charming, laughingly sidesteps the usual question at all her readings, "Is the book auto-biographical?" Here, Dawesar speaks to EGO about her childhood, inspirations and understanding the personality of young school-girl.

The character of Anamika, the protagonist of Baby-ji, is very young, just a 16-year-old girl.
I’m interested in people of all sorts and ages. My motivation for making Anamika a teenager was partly because I think that one is open to life in a certain way only at that age. One doesn’t have the caution and defensiveness that age and experience lend one later in life. It’s also a tough period in life and I think that teenagers reading the book might walk away feeling less marginalized.

	Abha Dawesar's Website

Anamika relates more to Humbert Humbert than Lolita. In her sexual relationships with her servant, Rani, she seems to take on the role of a sort of male oppressor, taking advantage of class differences.
I wasn’t interested in creating a Cinderella type character. Anamika is fully human with all the follies, ugliness, beauty, and life that being human implies. I was interested in showing that despite her desire to overcome her differences with Rani there are moments of imbalance. The reader can see this more clearly than Anamika, but Anamika too can see it at times.

On another note, while Anamika does see herself as Humbert Humbert and at times her actions are in keeping with this perception, the external observer can see that she’s also a sixteen year old girl with the emotional volatility it implies. We can see her vulnerability in the way she sobs on the phone to her mother when she goes away to Kasauli and in the way she clings to Rani in certain moments when she’s experiencing difficulties in her life. To pigeonhole her as only a male oppressor would require a fairly one-sided reading of the book.

How do you inhabit the voice of the diverse characters your books?
I’ve inhabited characters in different books differently and it’s exciting to see that there is no fixed process. Usually, it takes a while (anything between 30 to 60 pages) to get into a story. But once I’ve felt my way around most of the characters flow pretty naturally. The bigger issues are the plot, keeping the links between things happening at various levels of the story, and the interconnections between the characters.

Authors often speak of their childhoods as having a strong impact on their writing.
I had a pretty sick and bed-ridden childhood. By the age of seven I’d had all the third world diseases you can think of: measles, mumps, chicken pox, GI disorder, and a few bouts of malaria. I therefore ended up spending a lot more time in bed reading and not playing around like the other kids my age. Since I read a lot it became natural very early on to write as well.

So you have always thought of yourself as a writer.
I’ve always written but I haven’t always thought of myself as a writer. Though I wrote a novella when I was fifteen and then another one at nineteen, I only started thinking of myself as a writer when I quit my job to finish writing Babyji. Even after Miniplanner was published, because I continued to work in finance, I didn’t often call myself a writer.

There has been an explosion of South Asian writers in the past few years.
I don’t really compare myself to any writers based on ethnicity. I enjoy reading books by South Asian writers but it would be false to say that most of the books I read are by South Asian authors. In general, my interest is in reading books and not in literary criticism. I studied political philosophy and never took a literature class in college.

What are you working on these days?
My next novel is both a love story of sorts and a book about writers and writing. Set in New York and Paris, it’s really about this elderly man, a celebrated Indian writer, facing life having come out on the other side, looking back on his muses, his literature, how he’s lived.

And if you look back at your life, what has inspired you to write?
I’ve always written, it’s my way of being and comprehending. Also it’s fun. For the past three years since I quit working in corporate America to focus on my writing the sense of living my life through writing has intensified. It’s begun to color all real life experience in some way or other. I view cities, art, places, and situations through some kind of prism that is connected to writing.

Photograph by Jerry Bauer. Courtesy Abha Dawesar