Tishani Doshi

We include words that are mangled with Hindi.

So we have Hinglish, we have Tanglish, which is mixed with Tamil.

And I think that languages are actually far more porous and malleable than we give them credit for.

And that even though English, you know, has a particular structure and foundation, we can push it in many different ways.

So Lucy had been institutionalised and was born with Down syndrome and has some autistic tendencies.

And when...

Grace discovers that she has a sister.

She decides to change her life.

And she's really a character who's in a kind of crisis.

She's in an unhappy marriage.

She decides that she's going to look after her sister.

And for her, it's a bit of a moral question.

But it's also a difficulty between the idea of freedom and duty.

And so I think a lot of the novel was to try and write about what a relationship can be between sisters and siblings, but also what it can mean to be a caregiver.

So not to sentimentalize that experience, because I have my brother has Down syndrome and is autistic.

And so I write very close to the bone in that sense.

Yeah.

And at the same time, I want to talk about how it enlarges one's life.

It enlarges the way that you move through the world, the way that you see the world.

It increases your generosity if you are able to have relationships such as the one that I try to write about.