- Sibal’s fiction highlights complex characters within social structures.
Shivani Sibal is a novelist whose fiction closely observes the relationships between people, class, privilege, marriage and the social structures that shape everyday life. Her debut novel, Equations, examined the intricate class relations within an affluent Delhi family and the people whose lives intersected with it. The novel established Sibal’s interest in the spaces between privilege and vulnerability, and in the complicated human relationships that exist within unequal social worlds.
Her latest novel, Moms, takes this exploration further into the intimate world of motherhood, marriage and social expectation. Set within an affluent Delhi milieu, the novel follows Radhika Khanna and examines the pressures surrounding motherhood, the desire for social acceptance, the performance of having a perfect life, and the anxieties that exist beneath privilege.
In Moms, motherhood becomes both a deeply personal experience and a public performance. Schools, friendships, children’s achievements, parties, photographs and social relationships become markers through which women measure themselves and one another.
At the same time, Sibal looks closely at marriage and the structures of control that can exist within a seemingly comfortable domestic life.
What makes her fiction particularly interesting is her refusal to reduce her characters to social categories. Her characters inhabit worlds shaped by privilege, but they are also complicated individuals carrying their own fears, desires, contradictions and vulnerabilities.
Recently, Ashutosh Kumar Thakur spoke to Shivani Sibal about Moms, Equations, her creative journey, the evolution of her writing, the social worlds that inform her fiction and what she hopes to explore in her forthcoming work.
Q. Equations was your debut novel. What first drew you towards the world and characters of that novel?
A: Growing up in Delhi in the 1980’s, children used play on the colony streets every evening, unsupervised by adults, told to return when the street lights came on. It was a very normal thing back then, spontaneous play with whoever was around, which doesn’t really happen
now, who young children interact with is curated to a large extent by their parents. I wanted to write a novel around it, a tale of two friends separated by class, which was the genesis of the idea.
Q. Looking back at Equations today, what do you think that novel taught you about writing fiction?
A: Equations was my first novel, and it told the story of two men, partly set in 1980s India, a world I knew only as a child. In many ways, I was in strange new territory, and with the benefit of hindsight, there are things I would have done differently. I tried to apply those
learnings when I began Moms, and took my time over countless drafts until I felt entirely right about sending it out into the world. I would now approach finishing a novel as one would baking a cake – if you take it out of the oven before it is time, it will not be ready.
Q. Moms takes us into another affluent Delhi world. What was the first impulse behindwriting this novel?
A: Motherhood itself. Before I became a mother, I could not have written Moms, and I can’t pretend otherwise. After I was exposed to that world, I became aware of its particular social codes, hierarchies, competition and performances. Years before a wrote a single word, I knew my next novel would be called Moms, and the words came later.
Q. Moms is ostensibly about motherhood, but it is also about marriage, privilege, loneliness and social ex pectations. How did these different concerns come together for you?
A: I do not think these are separate concerns in real life. Motherhood is an identity that usually follows marriage in India – and privilege governs social expectations and how we mother. Loneliness is a universal emotion, so I think they are all jumbled together to begin
with.
Q. Radhika seems to have a comfortable and privileged life, yet she carries considerable anxiety. What interested you about this contradiction?
A: That there is no contradiction here is what I wanted to shine a torch on. It’s a common assumption about women whose lives appear enviable from the outside. Privilege does of course insulate one from many of life’s harsh realities, but at the same time it is not an
insurance against loneliness, pain, anxiety, control, self-harm and violence, and I wanted to explore that.
Q. In Moms, motherhood often becomes a form of social performance. Why did you want to explore this aspect of contemporary motherhood?
A: I think this holds true for many parts of modern life, not just motherhood. It’s not enough to be living a good life, you must appear to consistently live a good life. Motherhood as we know it in a certain urban setting has become overly prescriptive, with clear rules of what
good and bad moms do, and this only adds to the performance.
Q. You pay close attention to small conversations, gestures, friendships and social interactions. How important are these everyday details in helping you understand your characters?
A: I think god is in the details, and characters are best sketched out in what they do in the small moments.
Q. The mothers in the novel are not simply competing over their children. They are also comparing the lives their children seem to represent. How do you see this relationship between motherhood and social status?
A. Children have been, through the ages, considered as reflections of their parents. This is a timeless thing I think. The child’s achievements and failures are inevitably entangled with their parents’ aspirations and social status, and this is reflected in the book.
Q. Both Equations and Moms examine privilege, but from different perspectives. Do you see the two novels as connected parts of the same creative enquiry?
A: No I think they have shared themes of course, of power and privilege, but while Equations explores these themes from the prism of society, Moms tries to look more into the interior life of women .
Q. Your characters are rarely defined simply as privileged, oppressed, powerful or vulnerable. How important is it for you to preserve their contradictions while writing about social structures?
A: I think human beings are a jumble of contradictions, and that is something I would always like to layer into my writing. They are rarely purely good or bad. I have no problem with my characters being dislikeable. They are not me.
Q. Delhi is almost a character in both your novels. What does the city allow you to explore as a novelist?
A: All the characters in my novels are completely fictional, but the setting is real. Keeping with the old adage “ write what you know” , I have made my hometown a beloved constant in my work.
Q. Your prose is observant but restrained, and you generally allow the reader to arrive at their own judgments about the characters. Is this restraint something you consciously cultivate?
A: I write with a fly-on-the wall perspective, with some level of detachment from the story. I prefer to resist overexplaining, and would rather allow my readers to come to their own conclusions about my characters.
Q. Equations examined the architecture of class, while Moms moves further into the emotional and psychological architecture of privilege. When you look at the two novels together, what do you think they reveal about the questions that have continued to interest you as a writer? Has your understanding of class, privilege, gender, marriage and contemporary urban life changed through the process of writing these books?
A: I am interested in what social codes look both from the outside and the inside, and that is reflected in both novels. As I look deeper into it, I see class, power and privilege playing out everywhere, and that is something one cannot unsee.
Q. Long: With Equations and Moms, you have created two very different yet connected fictional worlds and developed a distinctive understanding of contemporary urban relationships. As you look ahead, how do you see your writing evolving? Are there new subjects, places, forms or kinds of characters that you are eager to explore in your next project? What are you hoping to discover as a writer that you have not yet explored in your fiction?
A: I am not someone who plans ahead in a very structured way. When the next story comes to me, I will follow it!
