‘It’s fun to blur real, unreal to say something true’

On the discourse around motherhood, using the uncanny in her fiction, examining the mother-daughter dynamic, and the experience of being a woman in her ‘reproductive’ years

- Simar Bhasin

The discourse around motherhood in both the Indian and the American contexts is laden with social and religious conservatism. Was this what you wanted to explore in your novel?

I never start a project thinking that I want to use fiction to explore a set of political ideals; if I did that, I think my books would not be very much fun to write or read. I usually start by thinking more about what's funny or strange or mysterious about the world, and in my life and my friends’ lives. At the time that I was rewriting Goddess Complex, what was funny and strange and mysterious in my life and my friends’ lives was the decision-making process around childbearing, the way some of us were choosing to parent and others were not.