Red Peacock

Set in the Land of Joy, West Bengal, an Eastern state of India, Red Peacock explores the essence of individual, cultural and political dilemmas the characters face while at the crossroads of their intertwined fates.

After stumbling over love and ambition, Tanaaya sets upon a path she never chose. Instead she becomes an integral part of the lives of ex-lovers, smitten brothers, a small-town couple, a college sweet-heart, betel smudged goons and a murder.

Red Peacock is a tale of seeking freedom, love and revenge painted with colours of blood, politics and bright yellow hues of West Bengal. It is fuelled with passion, and explores humans’ undisclosed subdued desires and limits they breach to achieve dreams.

In efforts of breaking shackles, do they really achieve what they seek? But do they even know what they seek anymore? When in a journey, not only the roads they travel change, but the travellers themselves too.

Red Peacock is a sweeping, emotionally charged coming of age novel that follows Tanaaya Chakraborty as she navigates desire, ambition, power and identity in modern India. Fierce, intelligent and deeply conflicted, Tanaaya grows from a defiant Bengali girl into a woman determined to seize control of her life on her own terms, even when the choices she makes blur the lines between freedom and self-destruction.

Against a vivid backdrop of family expectations, cultural pride, sexuality, class tensions and urban aspiration, Tanaaya’s relationships leave lasting marks on her. From the tenderness of Ashish to the dangerous magnetism of Debasish, and from intoxicating encounters to morally fraught compromises, every connection pushes her closer to confronting the question that haunts her throughout: what does true freedom really cost?

Lyrical, provocative and psychologically layered, Red Peacock explores the fragile intersections of love, consent, vanity, power and survival in a society where desire itself can become both weapon and wound.

Light beamed from the sky and fell on the soft, delicate skin of a child sitting on the lawn outside her house. The warmth of light she had been basking in since morning had left her skin red. As the soothing effect of the morning ebbed and the afternoon heat approached, she grew redder with heat and anger. Her mother was away inside the house, surrounded by her chattering aunts amidst activities of Mukhé-Bhaat (a Bengali social ritual) ceremony, which seemed extraneous to her.

A pack of unruly boys ran in her direction. They were mostly the chattering aunts’ clattering children. She saw them run, hands flapping like wings, encircle her and her friends and disappear into the house. She envied their freedom; they seemed to fly with their make-believe wings. One of them came out with a sweet, smashed it into powder and sprinkled it over her best friend, Anu. The boy clapped his hands, made a funny sound with his teeth and tongue and flew back inside the house to join his clan while Anu dusted the powder off her dress.

They were furious with the boys, especially with one. They enjoyed being furious; it made them feel like grown-ups.