The performance of perfect motherhood in Shivani Sibal’s ‘Moms’

Radhika Khanna has it all. Her successful, charming husband and her flourishing teenage daughter make up her Instagram-perfect family. Their lovely home is run by a team of servants in an exclusive Delhi neighbourhood; and their holidays are always expensive and exotic. Radhika, beautiful and poised with an immaculate designer wardrobe and an enviable social media presence, thrives in her group of ‘mom friends’ from her colony. But much like Radhika’s photoshoots, in Shivani Sibal’s second novel, Moms, we start suspecting fairly soon that appearances may be deceptive.

Initially, Moms reads like a satirical commentary on the hypocrisies of Delhi’s elite. One might see it as a natural follow-up to Equations (2021), Sibal’s debut which also critiqued class in the capital through the stories of two childhood friends: the wealthy Aahan Sikand and Rajesh, the son of the Sikands’ family driver. Unlike Equations which took place in the 1980s and 1990s, the setting of Moms is more contemporary and its narrative orbits the performance anxieties of the digital age. Radhika runs her household and manages her daughter Samara’s tuitions, swimming, music and ballet lessons, as well as her diet. She is a committee head at Samara’s school, leads a taskforce to beautify her neighbourhood, and is an exhaustive chronicler of her life online. Even an ice cream outing with her mom friends becomes a photo opportunity, as all the mothers automatically post pictures of their young children eating. Radhika’s image rests on being the perfect mother in front of the other parents at the school gates and on the WhatsApp groups.

So far, the novel seems part of the competitive ‘Alpha Mom’ narrative; think Momzillas by Jill Kargman or Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. Yet Moms is deceptive, as the plot moves from Delhi society’s superficialities to exploring Radhika’s interior life and the hairline cracks beneath her aura of perfection.

Those cracks have roots in Radhika’s history from her early years as the daughter of a Delhi High Court Justice living in a sprawling Lutyens bungalow. “We couldn’t be called rich when I was growing up,” she says in the book yet there is a privilege to this life. “The Lutyens bungalows are not built for privacy, even though they’re so large. Still, it was a magical place to live. The high ceilings, the large gardens full of birds and plants, the official car that took me wherever I wanted to go. It was all so grand. My friends used to comment on it. They’d say that my life was truly blessed. That there was something inherently wrong with that kind of perfection.”

Her life is punctuated by holidays at Nainital’s exclusive Boat Club and, of course, abroad, and university in London. When she is 22, her father, declares that if she does not find a suitable groom within a year, one will be found for her. Working or studying further is not on the menu. As Radhika thinks in hindsight, she ‘settled’ on Manik Khanna—a rising young lawyer and the son of her father’s friend. After an expensive honeymoon and a quick pregnancy, she normalises Manik’s worryingly controlling behaviour because, she admits to herself, “she enjoyed the good life”.

Instead, Radhika pours her whole identity into being the perfect mother to Samara who must in turn also play the role of the perfect daughter. It’s an intensive performance for both of them. Samara’s school ends up as the only space where her mother can wield any power—and she takes it so seriously that the other working mothers label her the ‘Professional Mom’

Meanwhile, her close friends, ‘supermoms’ Naina, Tara and Parul, are more unreliable allies than confidantes. Radhika tries not to compete with them but she keeps a beady eye on their lifestyles and their children’s accomplishments. The friends privately look down on Tara who has to earn her living as a yoga instructor. Sibal deconstructs the ideal of the intimate mothers’ circle, supposedly a safe space but never free of judgement and rivalry.

Radhika’s perspective exposes how deeply elitist she is, her privilege and entitlement. But more worrying is her denial of the deeply troubling aspects of her marriage and family life. She clings desperately to her flawless public image. But as the story progresses, the faultlines deepen and lead to a public confrontation at school. The incident follows Radhika through tense dinner parties and a showdown at a destination event in Rajasthan which leave her increasingly unable to control her repression and anxieties.

Moms drags in places and the endless ‘designer’ details get tedious. The tone shifts drastically but it gives the plot a sense of momentum. Sibal tries to deep-dive into an unsympathetic and unrelatable character’s inner life when her motivations, pain and actions are all too plausible. This is a darker, more unsettling book than Equations and ultimately more cynical with an undertone of real melancholy. There is no satisfying ending and no character comes out of it looking better than they started. If anything, some fall further in the readers’ estimation. Long after the ending, Moms leaves the reader with uncomfortable questions