A House For Mr Misra - Review

Each of us have different goals in our life – both personal and professional. When it comes to personal, mostly our goal is to buy a house. Maybe 10-20 years ago, many had building a house; today, not many can afford it. And, imagine having a dream or goal of building a house on the seashore where the sea wakes you up with its own music, talks to you throughout the day and daily sings you a lullaby when you go to sleep! Too much imagination, right? Jaishree Misra is taking us exactly through this dream of hers (or theirs!).

In a land where every application needs to go through twenty departments, and any thing has a law that says “thou shall not do that!” making people resort to loopholes is beautifully narrated in this book. One of the qualities of a book is how best you can see what you are reading, while you are reading. I must say that throughout the book, Jaishree has done a great job. The book starts with bringing a lively London in front of our eyes – the Borough market, Soho, the West End and the Covent Garden; and not to mention the organic juice and the joyful morning walks.

A sudden gear shift occurs when they come to India to build their dream sea-side house – a true sea-side house and not the usual lake-view apartments that we hear all the time in Bangalore where it really means that you can watch all the filth from your own apartment fills the lake. In a 200 page book, it is really impossible to narrate the entire episode of building a house, but for Jaishree, this was doable. The entire cycle of selecting the land, getting approvals, approaching the builder, architect and the staysuits that followed it is beautifully narrated. Sprinkled with subtle humour throughout, and with excellent choice of words, you enthusiastically read without worrying about food, water, rain etc., Be it the maid, the Trivandrum corporation, or the snake-bite night, it makes you laugh and enjoy, and more importantly you forget the zillion problems that you would be thinking about, otherwise.

I loved every bit of this book. I had to go to a place as a guardian to my family (without any business there actually). I started the book at 9 a.m. and I got it done by 2 p.m. I am usually a slow reader, but, for this book, I wasn’t. All credit goes to the author for such a wonderful book, and to Mr.Misra without whom this book wouldn’t have been in the first place as well as the humour that he added to this book.