As you enter Besant Avenue from the Aavin circle in Adyar, a few hundred metres down the road is a sign painted on the side of a building that simply says “Hedonistic High”.
In a city where most signs tend towards the conventional, due to most business owners playing it safe and naming their establishments “Murugan Stores” or “Saravana Juice Centre” or “Balaji Medicals”, a sign that says “Hedonistic High” immediately merits further investigation.
So I excitedly dialled the phone number (which the painter was kind enough to supply on the sign itself) to enquire about the nature of the institution that proudly carried such an excellent and tantalising name. I had already conjured up pictures of an English-medium school where students, staff and owners received rigorous training in the single-minded pursuit of worldly pleasures. I was taken with the idea of an academic institution so dedicated to the values of Hedonism, while most of their contemporaries foolishly chased ideals like academic rigour, frivolous sporting excellence, or thoroughly misplaced approaches to discipline. If I had had children of schoolgoing age, I would have instantly sent them here. Since I don’t, I considered applying for a job — maybe they were looking for a front-office receptionist or admin manager or perhaps an in-house game designer for combat balancing.
