It’s Monday morning and the first thing to catch my eye is Parini Shroff’s bookshelf in the background, controversially arranged by colour. “I’m a big fan of Zadie Smith and James McBride. White Teeth taught me that you could have a running joke in a book, like a callback. I also love Lily King. Her dialogue is so good. This is how you earn that real estate on the page,” she says, connecting three differently coloured tomes in one sentence.
Our interview was to take place a week prior, but Shroff had to move it around due to a pet emergency. The feline-coded cover of her new novel, Some People, had me convinced she was cat person, but the author confesses she’s a new dog mom to Pooka (who is absolutely fine now, in case you’re wondering). Shroff, in fact, is allergic to cats, much like her unseen protagonist, Kavya. I say unseen because while the novel may revolve around Kavya, we only get to know her through her mother and her husband (soon to be her ex).
The novel’s setting will be familiar to any elder millennial or Gen Xer dealing with ageing parents: Malti Patel, Kavya’s mother, has a fall and needs someone to take care of her in California. Nathan, the husband Kavya is separated from, steps in to look after her while Kavya is in India. Some People explores the duo’s relationship when forced to be together while also looking at their individual relationships with Kavya.
Tonally similar to her breakout hit, the Women’s Prize-longlisted The Bandit Queens, Some People is a tender exploration, or rather excavation, of two important relationships—that with a parent and a partner. Set over the course of a week, the plot relies on a chaotic cat, fuzzy memories, and some very relatable (and riotous) sentences that will definitely remind you of your mum.
That is the intention, given that Shroff bequeathed pieces of her own mum’s mannerisms to Malti and even dedicated the book to “the women in her life, mom and grandmom”. Dedications are important to this author, who dedicated her first novel, The Bandit Queens, to Arthur, a friend who helped her get through law school and always read her first drafts. “I have to write more because there are more people I like who expect dedications at this point. So now I just need to write more novels to appease them,” she says with a laugh.
Below, excerpts from our conversation:
Where did you get this unusual idea of setting the story on the dynamics between a mother-in-law and son-in-law?
I am very interested in the intermediary, and in this case the mother-in-law and the son-in-law. They have Kavya in common, and she is constantly negotiating between these two loved ones. What happens when that common denominator is yanked out and the pieces start to tumble because you can’t rely on that person to moderate and take care of everything? What kind of chaos will ensue? That’s really what drew me to these two characters.
You mention Kavya being the eldest daughter, or rather the only daughter, maintaining the peace. Is that true for you as well?
Yeah, I am the eldest daughter, so I approached it with a certain sense of experience there. Whether or not other people expect you to, you feel the onus of making sure everybody is sorted, right? Often at the expense of your own self-care. You’re like, ‘no, no, I’m okay if everybody else is okay’. And that is only healthy up to a certain point. I was approaching it from that angle. That’s why there’s like an absence of her in the novel, because finally that person gets some relief. By not physically being in close proximity, there’s an alleviation of duty.
It’s interesting how you’ve managed to make Kavya the central character even though she’s not physically present in the book... We only hear her via her WhatsApp texts and voice notes with Nathan.
I think there are two parts to this question. The literal answer would be that my editor and agent had some really good ideas about how we could insert Kavya without her physically being on scene. And even without being present—like you said, via voice notes and the WhatsApp conversations—finding her through memory was an opportunity because that delves into the second part of my answer, which is that of exploring Kavya through Nathan’s and Malti’s memories. It was another way to highlight that our memories aren’t necessarily trustworthy but they are what make us. For better or for worse, it’s what we have to rely on as we navigate our relationships. Sometimes those memories differ from those of a person who experienced the exact same event—they walk away with a different perception.
Your first novel, The Bandit Queens, drew inspiration from Phoolan Devi. Was there a real character that inspired anything in this one?
Well, the cat is real. The cat belongs to my future mother-in-law. We had Shadow stay with us for a couple of weeks when my fiancé’s mother was visiting. I had no experience with cats before this. This is the first time I cohabitated with one and it was kind of like living with a ghost, because things wouldn’t be where you’d left them the night before, but you wouldn’t really see or hear this cat. But I could see the effects of the cat.
Very appropriate name then. Shadow. Is it a black cat like on the cover?
Oh, yes—eyes, breed, and everything is taken directly from the real-life Shadow. In the family, we joke that the cat is going to get an agent and I’m going to have to start paying the cat.
Malti was also a really interesting character. Was there anyone she was inspired by?
The spirit of hers is a composite of several women of that generation who are now part of the Indian diaspora. But there are certain mannerisms that I found of my mother’s that are particularly endearing in English, the way she is, that I bequeathed to Malti.
Give us an example...
She spells sex. She goes S-E-X. I think it’s so cute. For the longest time, I thought she was censoring herself for the young ones, right? But then I got older and she still can’t say it!
Culturally, Nathan and Malti are very different people. How did you bridge this gap with sensitivity?
Thank you for telling me that I did. You hope to, right? But you never really know until it’s out there, shared, and no longer really just belongs to you. In the book, they both talk about how it’s difficult for people to know what they mean, because what they’re saying maybe comes across as wrong, either through tone [Nathan’s] or through a lack of vocabulary [Malti’s]. When they realise that they share that in common, the barriers eventually get kind of shaved down and they start to see, hear, and be open to what the other one’s trying to say as opposed to what they are saying. That’s another layer in how difficult it can be to communicate, and even when we do sometimes we’re not successful because the other person doesn’t walk away feeling the way that we want them to feel.
The setting for The Bandit Queens and Some People is very different, how different was the process of writing the two?
It wasn’t a conscious choice. The second novel I set out to write took place in Ahmedabad, also in Gujarat, but more city-based than rural. That was my intention. But when I was writing it, something wasn’t gelling. So, I put it aside and began Some People to keep my writing muscles toned until I could return to this manuscript set in Ahmedabad. And then before I knew it, it was ready before the one I had been working on for two years, so that kind of took me by surprise. It was not the plan, but the work knows what it wants to be and I often just need to get out of the way long enough for it to show me.
So, this is technically the third manuscript you’ve written...
Oh no. If we want to include failed manuscripts, I’m on number six at this point.
But is the Ahmedabad novel something you’re currently working on?
Yeah, I actually just finished it, but I’m working on edits for a different novel. So once again, the Ahmedabad one that I wanted to write got postponed. That manuscript was usurped by Some People, and then the second, the one that I just finished, came out in short order. And it just bumped that manuscript down the line. Poor guy. But I’ll get to it.
Anything you can tell us about the next one?
I would say that it has some fun women in it. And if people liked The Bandit Queens, they’ll probably like the fun women in this one.
How long did it take you to write Some People?
This is the fastest I’ve ever written, and I doubt I’ll ever write this fast again, but it took two months. It consumed me during that time. It was pretty much all I was thinking about, even when I wasn’t writing. I was scribbling ideas on napkin surfaces—I have never written like that before. And I don’t expect to again. It was just a thrill to be a passenger on a really cool ride.
How did you manage that? I know you’re a lawyer as well, so...
I know it sounds so impressive. The CV version sounds so cool, but I work as a lawyer part-time and I write part-time. I write in the mornings and then I’ll take a break and then I will do the law stuff in the afternoon—I treat that as a full workday.
Once you start reading the book, you pick up on why the novel is called Some People. How did you arrive at the title?
Titles are not my forte. Some People was really a placeholder for when you send it to an agent, editor; the document has to be titled something. I named it Some People, because the phrase turns into an inside joke between the two of them, even though in the beginning they’re kind of using it against each other, so I thought it was fitting. I did not expect it to go the distance, because it’s rather generic. But when we did mock-ups for the cover, the artist did such a great job and the lettering looked cool. Everybody on the project got kind of married to it.
If you had to describe this novel in a couple of words, how would you do it?
Unpacking messy baggage with humour.
Is there a first reader you share your drafts with after finishing them?
Nobody’s ever asked me that. But yeah, my dear friend [Arthur] from law school is my first reader. I practise [law] part-time and much prefer writing to being a lawyer. And this friend of mine also doesn’t love being an attorney, so we joke that the reason we were meant to go to law school is not necessarily so we could practise law but so we could have each other’s friendship. I actually dedicated The Bandit Queens to him.
Do you have any writing rituals?
Yes, it’s kind of silly, but I love candles. They’re these coloured tapered candles. I have three at a time [holds up three long candles in shades of indigo, deep purple, and forest green]. I love them, but I only let myself light them if I’m writing. They’re a trick/treat where I say to myself, ‘Even if you don’t feel like writing, just sit and pretend to until you do, because then you get to light your candles. And if you don’t write, then you don’t get to light them.’ So, you got to at least try.
