Babyji is a novel by Abha Dawesar first published in 2005. Set in 1980s Delhi, India, it recounts the coming of age and the sexual adventures and fantasies of a 16-year-old bespectacled schoolgirl, the only child of a Brahmin family. The three simultaneous "affairs" she has in the course of the novel are all secret, and all with members of her own gender: two with older women and one with a classmate.
The title of the book points to the old custo...
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Babyji is a novel by Abha Dawesar first published in 2005. Set in 1980s Delhi, India, it recounts the coming of age and the sexual adventures and fantasies of a 16-year-old bespectacled schoolgirl, the only child of a Brahmin family. The three simultaneous "affairs" she has in the course of the novel are all secret, and all with members of her own gender: two with older women and one with a classmate.
The title of the book points to the old custom of venerating an elder by referring to them with the suffix -ji added to their name (cf. "Gandhiji"). Ironically, in the novel it is the family servant who, though she is older than the daughter of the house, out of deference toward the latter's higher caste addresses her as "Babyji". ("Was I a baby or a Didi? Babyji was such a contradiction in terms, conveying too much respect that the age of a child doesn't warrant.")
Babyji is the winner of the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and of the 2006 Stonewall Book Award for Fiction...
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