Hedonistic world of the privileged youth

Hedon — perhaps the cover captures it, a shocking pink glitzy butterfly on stark black. Signed by just one name, Priyanka, no surname, nothing else. This is a book that flits like a butterfly between romance and classrooms, putting together teen high jinks and the angst of young lovers. Tara, or Nayantara, as she hates to be called, has an opinion about herself, she is good with words and can flash poetry at the drop of a hat.

All this is set against the background of Calcutta, to begin with, in a girl’s school called House that most people will guess at, the reign of a Communist Chief Minister who has waved the wand of languor over the city. Tara finds herself at a wedding reception at the fort hotel that everyone knows. There she gazes into the eyes of Jay Dhillon and is convinced that he is the one. As a character he doesn’t really work but his face has the vertical lines of the romantic hero and he can fish out a painful ‘dear girl’ when required.

In Tara’s world heartbreak is a disaster waiting to happen, but she toys with it, surrounded by a glittery world that reminds her of the Gatsby and his parties. Priyanka tinkers with a stream of consciousness kind of flow and proceeds to write a novel about a girl writing a novel. Tara follows all the dictates of literature — if your heart’s broken, write your way out of it — and tip your fedora to Lady Gaga’s second album and its rebellious spirit. There are the added attendants of drugs and alcohol to spike the excitement, which is why the book is called Hedon, for the hedonistic self-indulgent world of the privileged youth — though it also has an undercurrent of ‘head on’ to it required.

The writing has a complexity to it, the kind of meaningful meaninglessness, verging at times on cliché, as Jay critiques Tara’s poetry and Priyanka critiques her own book through the review of Tara’s novel. Tara feels like an outsider gazing cynically at a society she despises because she is the young privileged Bengali intellectual after all. Mookerjee chooses to give a new spin to the YA category in a way guaranteed not to creep out dudettes.

Anjana Basu is the author of Rhythms of Darkness.