We chat to Sheba Karim, author of The Thing We Call a Heart and Mariam Sharma Hits the Road, as well as the upcoming YA contemporary The Marvelous Mirza Girls, a love letter to New Delhi and an in-depth dive into grief and the #MeToo movement. We got to ask Sheba all our burning questions on favourite places in the world, upcoming projects and so much more!
Hi, Sheba! Thanks for taking the time to chat with us! Why don’t you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Thanks for having me! My main hats are writer, mother, partner, friend, teacher, enthusiastic consumer of chocolate. Most of the time I feel like I’m not doing any of these roles justice, except for the chocolate eating part. I grew up in upstate NY and spent much of my adult life in New York City, with stints in New Delhi, and have been living in Nashville for 7 years.
Now, tell us about The Marvelous Mirza Girls! What can readers expect?
At its heart, The Marvelous Mirza Girls is a love story. It’s also about coming to terms with grief, feminism and sex-positivity, and the ways moving to a different country can unravel and remake you. It’s also a love letter to New Delhi, a complicated city that holds a lot of meaning for me.
Your book has been described as “Vibrant New Delhi meets Gilmore Girls”. Was the mother-daughter relationship between Lorelai and Rory Gilmore something that inspired you when penning Ruby and Noreen’s relationship?
Yes! A few years ago, I watched Gilmore Girls and really enjoyed it. For me, the best part of the show is the witty banter between Lorelai and Rory, and also how close and supportive they are to one another. I wanted Noreen and her mother Ruby to have a similar vibe and relationship.
I was enamored by the descriptions of the magical places Kabir and Noreen visit. If you could teleport to any place in the world right now, where would you go and why?
I would teleport to New York City, because a lot of my close friends and family in the NYC area and I haven’t seen most of them in over a year, since the pandemic began. My second choice would be Delhi, to see friends and family there. It’s interesting, how the pandemic has shifted my perspective on travel from places to people, from exploration to familiarity, instead of what place do I want to explore, I’m thinking, who do I need to see?
The Marvelous Mirza Girls is a love letter to New Delhi – did your own love for the place inspire this book? How did you choose what places, cultural details and political topics to address?
If I hadn’t moved to Delhi in my early 30’s, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. It was the first time I’d ever really lived on my own. I got out of a terrible relationship, I made incredible friendships, had experiences I wouldn’t have been able to imagine before, I started dating the man who’s now my husband. When you’re 16 you think 30 is so old, that you’ll have everything figured out by then—you don’t realize that even in your 30’s you might be evolving, finding new paths, changing. Moving to Delhi was my catalyst for positive change, as I think moving abroad can often be.
In terms of places, when I first moved to India, I was researching a novel set in 13th century Delhi, so I was spending a lot of time thinking, imagining, and visiting the ruins of medieval Delhi. The ruins in Delhi can be magical places that open up possibilities of connection, both to the past and between people, and quite a few of these ruins feature in the book. My husband introduced me to the ruins of a 14th century palace called Firoz Shah Kotla, where Kabir takes Noreen on their first date, so that place has particular meaning to me. It is also an intense place, where people leave letters to jinn, hoping the jinn can help them with what’s going on in their lives. Noreen experiences this emotional intensity when she visits, just as I did.
In terms of cultural details, some are place-based, as different places in Delhi may have different sights/smells/sounds. Others are things that Noreen, who’s never been to South Asia before, has to adjust to, like having domestic help, the lack of privacy, the pointed questions, the almost anything-goes approach to driving, the very privileged position she is suddenly in as compared to 95% of the city. As for political topics, caste and class and the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in conjunction with increased violence against minorities are all aspects she’d hear people in her and her mother’s social circle discussing, as well as read about in the paper. Since she has a Muslim background, she’d also be attuned to the rising violence and Islamophobia in the country.
Beyond New Delhi, what are some places that you would love to visit and explore in the future?
I’ve travelled India a fair amount but there are still so many places in the country I haven’t been, Hyderabad, the Andamans, the Northeast. One of my dreams was to go to Festival in the Desert, which is a music festival in Mali, but that has been on hold for years now due to civil unrest. Also on my bucket list is Tanzania, Senegal, and seeing the Northern Lights from Norway or maybe Alaska.
You discuss the MeToo movement in depth within the novel, especially as Kabir faces personal stakes in the movement. What was the hardest part to write about or get right?
For obvious reasons, most stories about MeToo focus on the perpetrator and the survivor. But there are others who can be affected by MeToo, such as close friends, partners and family members, and I wanted to explore it from this angle. Kabir wants to be a good person and do the right thing, but there’s no road map for what to do when there are anonymous MeToo allegations against your father. Even though the allegations are “minor” on the MeToo spectrum, they’re still serious and Kabir treats them as such. The hardest part was wondering if you would offend a reader who has a strong opinion of right and wrong in Kabir’s situation. But ultimately, you have to be true to your character, and Kabir’s decision to stop speaking to his dad but not publicly denounce him on social media is the right one for him. Whether or not a reader would choose to respond differently, I hope they’ll empathize with the complexity of Kabir’s situation.
Noreen is still grieving for her late aunt Sonia and her experience of that loss really resonated with me. But beyond that, she has some amazing experiences in this book. What was the most fun scene to write of her story and what was the most challenging?
Ah, there were so many fun scenes to write! The art opening, the encounter with the Bollywood star, the scene at the café with Ankita, the karaoke party. The most challenging may have been the Firoz Shah Kotla scene, when Noreen and Kabir leave their first letters to the jinn, because I had to figure out how to capture the feel and emotional weight of a place that’s unlike any other place I’ve ever been.
Kabir is an absolute sweetheart that is too pure for this world – sure, he has his flaws but his kindness just blew my mind. Where do you imagine Kabir ending up after The Marvelous Girls ends?
Kabir really does have a kind heart! I imagine him in therapy, working through what’s happened with his father and his own emotional baggage with his parents, among other things. He knows that, to fully come into his own, he has to leave Delhi, and so he works hard, builds a great photo portfolio together, and eventually moves abroad for a MFA in photography.
With The Marvelous Mirza Girls releasing soon, are you already working on another project?
I have a novel idea in mind, but my more immediate goal is to work on a script. You can see in The Marvelous Mirza Girls that I’ve been thinking about the genre!
Last but not least, do you have any bookish recommendations for our readers?
For other books set in India, I recommend A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanium and Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, both of which portray the lives of underprivileged Indians with honesty and complexity. Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap is a witty and moving short story collection set in Thailand. Homeland Elegy by Ayad Akhtar was one of my favourite reads this year, as was The Secret Lives of Black Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw.
In terms of YA, anything by David Arnold (his latest, The Electric Kingdom, is a post-apocalyptic mind-bending stunner of a novel). Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert is such a beautiful, heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful book. Looking forward to reading her latest, When We Were Infinite. I’ve taught The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, a luminous novel in verse. I’m also a big fan of this lesser-known, edgier YA novel called Under the Wolf, Under the Dog by Adam Rapp.
You can find Sheba on Twitter and Instagram, and at her website.
