Review of Jaishree Misra’s ‘A Home For Mrs M’

• Misra arrived in Britain in the early 1990s.

• She explores her journey of migration, marriage, motherhood and belonging across three decades in her memoir.

• She talks about why she decided to make her home in an alien land all the while questioning whether this place could ever really become “home”.

Returning to writing after a decade, Jaishree Misra is here with A Home for Mrs M (Speaking Tiger), a warm, funny memoir of an Indian woman making a home in Britain. Arriving in Britain in the early 1990s along with mango pickle, a love for English books and a daughter with special needs, she explores her journey of migration, marriage, motherhood and belonging across three decades in her memoir. This book is accompanied by the republishing of A House for Mr M, a companion volume that extends Misra’s intimate exploration of home, marriage and belonging.

At the start, the author launches into the hierarchy of immigrant nomenclature, explaining various terms, such as émigré, expat, foreigner/tourist, legal immigrant, migrant, asylum-seeker and refugee. She then talks about why she decided to make her home in an alien land—an unsuccessful arranged marriage and an eight-year-old daughter who had severe communication and cognitive difficulties—all the while questioning whether this place could ever really become “home”. Having lost her heart to a certain Mr M, who was living in Britain at the time, finally sealed the deal for her.

After completing a Master’s programme in India, she was offered a place on a postgraduate diploma programme in Special Education at the University of London. Having researched many special schools in Britain, she was delighted to learn that Britain is a “welfare state”, which meant no school fees for her daughter. She was also glad to learn that most of London’s museums and art galleries offered free entry to visitors.

Reaching a quaint town called Milton Keynes—named after her favourite poet—she felt like she had arrived in some kind of “strange magical La La Land”. She humorously describes her first impressions of this “strange, wondrous, unreal and exceedingly beautiful country”—comparing it to the lyrics of The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. Misra admits that it was all the Enid Blyton books she had read as a child which were responsible for her belief that England was “a jovial land of red polka-dotted toadstools, mischievous pixies and elves and boys whose blue hats had bells that rang when they nodded.” When she later began reading Austen and the Brontes, she realised that the English were exactly like Indians after all, “with their arranged marriages and desirably rich bachelors and obsessive lovers.”

Misra candidly talks about grappling with several daily matters, including the culture, language, food, academics, grocery shopping and the rail system. Over the course of the book, she deciphers several peculiarities of the British: the English rain, accents, racism and the stiff upper lip. A well-travelled cousin once told her that Britain’s superciliousness towards South Asians arose from having ruled them in the past. Also, because the first batch of immigrants from the subcontinent were porters at Heathrow airport and foundry workers in the Midlands—“too lowly to matter”. 

While “British reserve” was a warning she had received many times, she surprisingly found them to be quite willing to help when required. She also noticed that the British celebrate their sense of humour more than anyone else, which she noticed everywhere she went. Also, as a non-drinker, she found that alcohol is deeply embedded in the fabric of British social life. She came to realise that unlike in India where the festive season means hundreds of people on the streets and in markets, England during Christmas came to a standstill as it is considered “strictly family time for the Brits”.

Over time, Misra began some voluntary work—taking care of kids of some families—before taking on paid employment as a special education teacher in a college. During the course of her work, she got to interact with and to help, among others, mothers with learning disabilities and children with histories of violent abuse, which left them with severe behavioural issues. After completing a course in broadcast journalism at the London College of Communication, she took on a few internships and also wrote columns. After giving up her job as a news reporter at BBC Three Counties Radio, she plunged into depression. It was during that period that she wrote her first book and became a published author.

Though the British may have brought Indians closer to the English language and cricket, Misra reminds us that the English have taken a number of words from Indian languages and made them their own. While researching a book of historical fiction, she discovered how little present-day Brits know about the British Empire—for which she says the UK’s Department of Education is mostly to blame.

(Neha Kirpal is a New Delhi-based freelance writer)