India, July 19 -- 1The 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. These are personal dramas that have undeniable political significance, but I start with the micro, petty stuff - for Sanjana, "my best friend is having a baby and I feel neglected" (rather than "I am mad about reproductive rights") - and eventually end up addressing the macro, the political. 2In Gold Diggers (2021), there was a strain of the magical, though the thematic concerns placed it well within the genre of social-realist text. In Goddess Complex, you include a character with your name, though she is far from a literary self-portrait. Is this use of the "uncanny" something you seek out while writing fiction, as a play on real vs fantastical? That's very well-said. In a word, yes. Gold Diggers is an immigrant coming-of-age story that uses magical realism to say something about the familiar, even prosaic, world of Indian Americans growing up in the US suburbs. Goddess Complex, by contrast, uses the uncanny to say something about the visceral (yet often creepy) experience of being a woman in her "reproductive" years. In both cases, I've found it fun, and also natural, to blur real and unreal, in service of saying something true. 3As in your book, there has been an examination of the mother-daughter dynamic elsewhere in contemporary literary fiction that also delves into questions of identity, angst and worldmaking (Rosarita, The Illuminated, Girl in White Cotton, Tomb of Sand, Stone Yard Devotional). What drew you to the exploration of this dynamic? I'm a daughter who has chosen not to become a mother. I couldn't not be interested in that dynamic. I think the choice we make of whether or not to parent - which is ultimately the subject of Goddess Complex - is fascinating because it's about us but also about our families, in the sense that our picture of parenthood is informed by our parents....