“Giving Birth is One Way but Not the Only way…”: In Conversation with Saumya Dave

ABSTRACT

According to Lori Nelson Spielman, Saumya Dave’s Well-Behaved Indian Women is a “stunning debut [and] celebration of women – their loves and loyalties, dreams and disappointments, hopes and heartbreaks’. This interview focuses on Saumya Dave’s work and views on motherhood and mothering. Dave is also a psychiatrist, and through this discussion on her novel, we have attempted to understand how “mothering” is practised in ways a woman is brought up by her mother, carrying a similar set of beliefs to further transfer to her daughter. The conversation references the characters of her novel to contextualize Dave’s arguments on motherhood in India alongside motherhood in the USA. It further highlights the position, identity, agency, and discourse of motherhood within the institutionalized setup of Indian society. She discussed her take on the transition of a woman into motherhood and explained her motivation and some of the research that created this work. Through the interview, we wish to map the silence of the mothers in Indian narratives, with the focus being on her select novel Well-Behaved Indian Women.

KEYWORDS:

• Indian motherhood
• institution
• Saumya Dave
• agency
• patriarchy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).