Book Excerpt: Anuradha Marwah's 'The Higher Education Of Geetika Mehendiratta'

The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta is a timeless reflection on sexuality, power, and the politics of education. It follows a young girl, academically gifted and sexually curious, who leaves her small-town for a few weeks in a big city with endless dreams and liberated lives. The bustling metro opens up new possibilities but also unsettles her expectations of love, ambition, and independence.

Unapologetic and intimate, the story is a bold coming-of-age tale about wanting, choosing, and claiming one’s self. Originally published in 1993, The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta was one of India's earliest campus novels and remains a humourous and raw portrayal of youth, ambition, and identity.

Book Excerpt: The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta

Watermelon

The boys’ hostel was built on the same lines as the girls’: five storeys and rows of single rooms. Most of the rooms were locked. The boys probably got back much later from the library than we did. Dipankar’s room was on the third floor. Lakshmi sprinted up the stairs much faster than I did. I noticed that, in spite of her unorthodox attire, she managed to look quite curvaceous. She was built like Munmun, in fact, but how different they were! Munmun wore itsy-bitsy blouses and chiffon saris, and though she had liked my thick cotton one, I was pretty sure she never wore such saris herself.

Dipankar’s room had a pall of tobacco in the air. There were newspapers, books and journals strewn all over. A brightly woven counterpane covered the bed.

Dipankar was an attractive man. He had a baby face with crinkled, laughing eyes. He seemed delighted to see Lakshmi. I was surprised by his voice—it was low-pitched, tobacco-thick and altogether too sophisticated to emerge from a mouth that was smiling so much.

‘Hello, Lakshmi. I was wondering whether I would get to taste the watermelon.’

‘Meet my friend Geetika. She is in the School of Linguistics and English.’

‘Hello, Geetika. I didn’t know you were doing English…’

I was thankful Dipankar didn’t ask the usual question about whether literature was taught at all in what was primarily a linguistics department.

We chatted a while about this and that. I was distracted by the way he kept smiling at Lakshmi.

‘Did you see the Baul performance last evening?’ asked Dipankar, looking at both of us.

‘No, I couldn’t go. Geetika had gone for it.’

‘It was rather good,’ I said colourlessly. No, I didn’t want Dipankar’s attention the way I had wanted masculine attention in Desertvadi.

‘You know, Lakshmi, at a point I wondered about the intimacy that these dancers shared. It wasn’t only religion, it was also sexual, you know…a definite homosexual element…’ he was saying.

‘Well, they are ascetics…’ Lakshmi began.

‘The erotic eremite bit…That’s not true of Bauls, though,’ said Dipankar with a smile. ‘I was wondering whether it is inherent in the nature of worship…’

Suddenly embarrassed, I started looking at the newspaper on his desk; I could see his name in print—Dipankar Banerjee.

‘What is this that you have written?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, just some reviews. These papers don’t pay too badly and one also gets the book.’

‘What have you reviewed?’ asked Lakshmi.

‘Salman Rushdie’s recent publication, Shame.’

‘I really like his work,’ I said.

‘Well, he is rather distanced from his subject matter…’

‘I liked his Midnight’s Children,’ said Lakshmi.

‘In Midnight’s Children, which definitely had a lot of potential, he did engage with his subject matter in a way… But in Shame, which is a kind of roman à clef, the suavity bothered me… And one wonders about his motivation—he is sitting there and writing about India and Pakistan… Obviously giving the gora log what they want to read.’

I was wishing I hadn’t opened my mouth. 

‘I would say that for most Indian writing in English,’ said Lakshmi. ‘This quest for foreign readership is rather apparent. I find Tamil literature so much more fulfilling.’

I didn’t even know Lakshmi read Tamil.

‘I read a bit of Bengali,’ said Dipankar. ‘I would tend to agree with you. Regional literatures don’t suffer that much from this kind of what they are calling “epistemological shift” these days.’

‘Geetika writes in English…’ said the wicked Lakshmi.

‘Oh, do you!’ said Dipankar tolerantly, smiling at me. ‘Poetry?’

‘Yes, er…and some prose, just a little bit!’

I could feel my cheeks burn. I wanted to run from there. Dipankar was again smiling at Lakshmi. I didn’t belong here. I wished Ratish would come and take me away to his chiffon crowd.

It was rather late when we emerged from Dipankar’s hostel.

‘So, Lakshmi… I didn’t know he was such an admirer of yours.’

‘Are you jealous, Mrs Geetika Ratish?’

‘I didn’t like him very much…and I didn’t know you read Tamil.’

‘What are you getting so uppity about… Because you couldn’t defend your Salman Rushdie?’

I didn’t know what had bothered me. Perhaps it was the ease with which Dipankar had used the term ‘epistemological shift’.

‘He is cute,’ said Lakshmi, ‘but he is not an Iyer.’ 

Extracted from 'The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta' by Anuradha Marwah, published by Rupa Publications.