Minakhi Misra

Author: Minakhi Misra

  • One Person at a Time

    Last year, Anandi had called me one afternoon with good news. “Bhaiji, I passed first class in Open University exam.” She had finally gotten herself a 12th standard degree. And she was betting on it to be her exit ticket from a life of suffering, the horrors of which very few of us can imagine.

    “So, what now?” I asked.

    “You know I wanted to be a doctor. But that’s too much to study. No no. I can never do that. So, I was thinking I will become a nurse. Tai also agrees.” (more…)

  • The Old Ways in a City of Whims

    “Go, go. Get the cardboards. Can’t you see how the mosquitoes are all over the saab? Go go.”

    We were on a street near a historical monument in a city that’s known all over the world for the most beautiful mausoleum any man has ever built for his beloved wife. The monument we were outside, however, wasn’t that mausoleum. It was a fort, some of whose inside walls had been red once and then yellow and finally white. Clearly, the father ruler hadn’t liked what the grandfather had built and in turn, the son ruler hadn’t liked what the father had changed. Yes, I was in a city of whims, where more stock was given to fancies of the emperors than was to the realities of its citizens. (more…)

  • Goodwill Counting

    “If an apple costs five rupees and a lemon costs three rupees, how much will you have to pay for both?”

    I was sitting outside Raipur railway station, near a fruitseller’s pushcart, trying to teach a bunch of street kids a bit about money and how to count it.

    “Don’t bother with them, Saab,” said the fruitseller, a greying man who somehow reminded me of hailstone lemonades that my grandmother always talked of but never made. “They are only here because you offered them each a small platter. What do they care about all this?” (more…)

  • The Things They Carried to Durga Pujo

    In the calm sea of brightly clothed humanity, inching towards the Gariahat Pujo Pandal, there were several things bobbing up and down that caught one’s attention.

    The narrow streets carried over a thousand men and women and people of the sex no one wanted to acknowledge. The air carried a hotness and humidity that could only have been the vapours of hopes and ambitions rising from the bodies of these thousands on the streets and the thousands who were here before them. The tall bamboo frames on the side of the road carried branded promises of prosperity and future security, with tiny bindi shaped stars that talked about terms and conditions immediately below the message that celebrated unconditional love. (more…)

  • Eulogy for My First Laptop

    We were together for six years.
    Six years! Can you imagine?
    It is an unnaturally long time, even for girlfriends.
    But there we were – together, for six years!

    Back when I did not know her
    and when my elder brother asked me
    What qualities I was looking for in her,
    I painted for him a picture so ideal
    That even I did not think
    Such a one could be found.
    I wanted her to be so smart
    That she could run eight threads in her head
    All at the same time.
    I wanted her to have a memory
    That could hold every secret of mine,
    Without ever complaining about her space.
    I wanted her face to be so beautiful
    That even when I look closer, grain by grain,
    I should be able to resolve, very clearly
    The minuteness of her imperfections.
    And if these were not demands steep enough,
    I also wanted her to be able run anything
    That I would load her with.

    And still, and still, by magic or some such craft.
    My brother, the conjurer of dreams, brought her to me.
    Yes, she did weigh more than the others,
    And yes, she was slightly bigger than my liking,
    But the moment she sat on my lap,
    I knew she was everything I had asked for.
    Her smartness was unparalleled then,
    And her memory as good as any other of her generation.
    She was more beautiful in what she showed me
    That what I had seen in my mind’s eyes,
    And she could run everything so smoothly,
    That I was sure she would make a good housewife.

    Originally recited to mildly amused friends the day my first laptop,
    a juiced-up Dell Studio 15 (with 2k resolution and i7 processor) died in 2015

  • Happy Independence Day

    Before 1947, if one had a distinctly Indian name, which 99% Indians did, one could literally die of a name.

    In 1943, a British Naval Officer, who was from Indian roots but had been born and brought up as a pure Brit in Sussex, was assigned to a mission at the Bombay port. He had never sympathised with the Indian cause and had taken every step he could to make it known to people that despite his roots, he was very thoroughly a Brit.

    But Bombay was a new place and new places come with their new prejudices. When the Master-of-Port at Bombay saw that someone by the name of Rustomji Jahajwalah was asking permission to dock his rowing boat, he assumed almost immediately that the line saying “Boatswain in His Highness’s Royal British Navy” must have been clearly a mistake. (more…)

  • Misty Mountains and Silver Fountains

    Misty Mountains and Silver Fountains

    Misty Mountains
    And Silver Fountains
    Are no longer that far.
    Notice that today, they are
    In our very homes here,
    So much to my fear,
    As Man’s dirty parody
    Of the Dwarvish Morian tragedy
    In which the smaller children
    Are overrun by the taller adults,
    Who with firebrands held in their teeth
    And rising mountains of ashes beneath,
    Puff out immaculate misty rings
    That float skywards on their wings
    As Fallen Angels set to do their share
    Of hanging on, as Death, up in the misty air.
    And so the children are slowly choking
    On the abject indifference of indiscriminate smoking
    While not-yet-old men are dying of their dragging faults
    And silver coins are pouring out into bolted vaults.

  • Though Much is Lost, Much Abides

    The Mumbai-Nagpur Duronto Express on 23rd June did not come even to the starting station until it was well over an hour late. Expectant passengers passed their time looking from the announcement screen to the digital clock hanging all along platform number 18. Bored of the wait, a group of three friends, well past their age of retirement, sat down and decided to play a game of Hearts. Only god knows why they were bent on playing a game of four when they were only three. Perhaps, it was some wisdom that a 24 year old cynic did not possess. It was definitely beyond his understanding. (more…)

  • Being an Authorpreneur: why writing feels so much like starting up

    People like Eric Schmidt scare the daylight out of me when they say we are, presently, producing as much content in 48 hours as we did from the beginning of time till 2003. Just take a minute and imagine: every single day we are producing as much text as there is in half the libraries of the world. What Schmidt is basically telling us is that we can be great writers, but if we can’t figure out a way to stand out in today’s crowded world of content, we are just hobbyists and little else. (more…)

  • World Book Day in 23 Tweets

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