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.

Mr and Mrs Sharma know about Tripta Adhikari but naturally assume that the latter has a maternal relationship with their daughter, while India herself knows very well that what she is doing amounts to statutory rape.

This, of course, provides the girl with ample opportunity to explore submissive Rani's perfect body, in spite of the servant's occasional tentative protestations that "Babyji", for her own good, should seek the love of a boy her own age.

Anamika, however, sticks with her choice, rejects male advances, and, despite the danger of being stigmatised as someone who associates with a person from a much lower caste, is even prepared to teach Rani some English.

In Babyji, Dawesar paints a Delhi of crime, rape, dirt, blackouts, backwardness, residual colonialism, domestic violence, and arranged marriages, a city where promising young people often see their only option as going to the United States, thus contributing to the brain drain and setting in motion a vicious circle.

People like Rani have been led to believe that "women are not meant to enjoy," and when Adit talks about his wife he calls her a "power woman" because she works for American Express.

A Publishers Weekly review states, "Despite its meandering path, the novel achieves an impressive balance between moral inquiry and decadent pleasure, pleasing the intellect and the senses—if not necessarily the heart—of the open-minded reader.

"[1] Melissa Price writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, "Like Anamika's quest for new and improved experiences, Dawesar's narrative is sometimes rushed, particularly during the last third of the book, which is more enervating than involving.

In "Babyji's" final pages, Anamika's revelation that her world is on the verge of opening up in exciting and significant ways isn't moving so much as it is the last plot-point.