Ink & Quill
Collective

QuillMark Issue #3

Fresh off the Boat — from Newcastle to Bhopal

Kalpana Misra

This memoir traces my journey to understanding the uniqueness of my third culture family. I arrived in India at age three with my German mother and Bengali father. Born in England, I was transplanted like a rice sapling into my father’s culture. The memoir, set mainly in the two cities of Calcutta and Bhopal spans Europe and India and the adjustments the family must make.

The larger theme of the memoir is the alternating pull of the two cultures, the sense that something is missing. The ever present nostalgia, emanating from one parent or the other is explored. Neither of the two countries feels like home. A desire to fit in with the country I live in conflicts with an equally strong desire to stand out and celebrate the difference. Choosing between two cultures, sometimes three, is the primary theme of the memoir.

Artwork - Tetsong Jamir

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Kalpana Misra

Kalpana lives with her cats between New Delhi and a cottage in the Himalayas. She loves swimming in the summer, yoga all year round, cake any time and doesn’t like being asked to choose between cats and dogs. She is a German/Indian origin writer of short stories, a novel and poems. She has a degree in English Literature from Delhi University and one in Sociology. She works as a journalist, an editor, and a teacher of English. Her work has been published in Indian journals and anthologies such as Education World, Parenting, The Statesman, Outlook Traveller, Spark, The Poetry Anthology, Kitaab. Her first novel To Be, Not Seem to Be is out in the query trenches..