Reshmi Sinha
Part 1
Misty scrolled through her phone as the afternoon sun slid gently across her balcony tiles. Her fingers paused, then moved rapidly over the keyboard, tapping out a caption beneath a carefully edited selfie. “Patriarchy has no place in our bodies. #MyBodyMyRules #FeministVoices #BurnTheNorms.” Within seconds, the likes began to roll in—heart-shaped dopamine boosts. She knew her angle, her aesthetic, her voice. On Instagram, she was fierce, unrelenting, a warrior wrapped in reels and carousels. But in the quiet of her one-bedroom flat in South Kolkata, Misty often stared at the mirror and felt like an impostor.
She lived alone in a rented apartment above a noisy sweet shop, her room constantly scented with syrupy shondesh and mishti doi. Her followers knew none of that. They didn’t know about her sleepless nights, the cigarette burns on her bathroom windowsill, the unanswered texts from her mother asking when she’d visit home. Misty had left her small town in Nadia three years ago, dreaming of becoming a writer. What she became instead was a digital persona—a feminist influencer with over ninety-eight thousand followers and brand collaborations with handloom boutiques and herbal skincare startups.
When Misty had first opened her Instagram account, it was just to share poems. Her words had been raw and angry then, born from her own experiences—catcalls in narrow lanes, teachers who laughed when she spoke of consent, cousins who were married off before twenty. Gradually, people had started following her. A few DMs turned into collaborations, and then came the panel invites and shout-outs from verified accounts. She had shaped herself into an archetype: bold, articulate, socially aware. But the transformation had come with a cost.
Outside the frames and filters, Misty’s real life was tangled in silence. Her boyfriend, Souvik, had never liked her online presence. “You’re always ranting,” he’d said once after watching her reel on workplace harassment. “Do you really think feminism is going to change your rent? Your job? Anything?” Misty had argued with him then, passionately, reminding him of her right to speak. But the truth was, after those fights, she often logged out and cried, feeling powerless in the very battles she claimed to be fighting.
Today was different. She had woken up to a notification from a popular online magazine. They wanted to feature her in a piece titled “Young Feminists Who Are Changing India’s Digital Landscape.” Misty had accepted immediately, but a sharp pang had lodged itself in her chest. “What if they ask me about my activism offline?” she wondered, knowing full well she hadn’t attended a single protest in over a year. She had reasons—her freelance work didn’t pay much, and time was tight—but the guilt stayed.
She checked her inbox. Messages flooded in. “Queen,” one follower wrote. “You inspire me to speak up,” another said. Misty smiled, then closed her phone and walked to the kitchen. As she stirred her instant noodles, her mind wandered back to her childhood. Her father, a stern man with traditional values, had once slapped her for refusing to wear a salwar kameez to a family gathering. “Too loud, too proud,” he had said. Misty hadn’t spoken to him in months.
That night, after dinner, she sat at her desk to draft her answers for the magazine interview. One of the questions read: “What does feminism mean to you personally?” Misty stared at the blinking cursor. Personally. That word stuck like a splinter. She thought of her neighbour, Rini di, who stayed with a husband that hit her, but smiled during Durga Puja for the family album. She thought of her own silence when her male colleague made sexist jokes during team calls. She thought of Souvik, who had started seeing someone else but still messaged her at 2 a.m. when he was drunk.
Misty started typing: “Feminism, to me, is a messy, painful, and necessary journey. It is not only about slogans but also about surviving shame, fear, and contradiction. It’s about fighting for yourself even when your voice trembles.” She paused, then deleted it. She typed again, more polished this time: “Feminism means equality, dignity, and freedom of expression. It’s a movement that empowers voices—online and offline—to reshape the world.”
She leaned back. It sounded right. It sounded acceptable. But it didn’t sound like her.
The next day, Misty met her friend Shalini at a café in Park Street. Shalini, a lawyer who worked for a women’s rights NGO, listened patiently as Misty confessed her doubts. “Am I a fraud?” Misty whispered, stirring her cold coffee. “I post about courage but I live with fear. I write about independence but I can’t leave Souvik completely. I talk about sisterhood but I avoid my mother’s calls.”
Shalini touched her hand gently. “The personal is political, Misty. You don’t have to be perfect to be a feminist. You just have to be honest.”
Misty nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. That night, she posted a long caption with no makeup, no edits. Just a close-up of her tear-streaked face and a note that read, “I am not fearless. I’m not always loud. But I’m trying. Every day. #UnfilteredFeminism”
The post didn’t go viral. In fact, she lost a few hundred followers. But the ones who stayed flooded her inbox with their own stories—silent fights, fractured identities, small acts of rebellion. Misty read them all, one by one, as the dawn broke over the city. For the first time in months, she felt something like peace.
Part 2
The day after her vulnerable post, Misty didn’t open Instagram until well past noon. The silence felt liberating. No buzz of notifications, no curated stories, no resharing of feminist quotes from Audre Lorde or Simone de Beauvoir. The app icon stared at her from the top corner of her screen, but she let it be. For the first time in weeks, she made her bed, watered her plants, and brewed coffee without thinking of how it would look on camera.
She finally tapped the icon after lunch. Fewer likes than usual. Fewer comments. Some unfollows. But the DMs—those were different. One girl wrote: “I showed your post to my mother. She cried. Thank you.” Another message came from a boy: “I’ve been struggling with anxiety. Seeing you admit your fear made me feel less alone.” Misty replied to every one of them. Slowly. Carefully. Like tending wounds.
Later that evening, she received a text from Souvik. “Saw your post. Are you okay?” No emojis. No niceties. Just five words that came with the familiar weight of his voice. Misty didn’t respond. Not because she didn’t feel like it, but because she didn’t know how to say what she really felt anymore. Souvik had always preferred versions of her that weren’t too loud, too political, too opinionated. When she started gaining followers, he had said, “Just don’t forget who you are.” But Misty was beginning to realize that she had never truly known who that was in the first place.
That night, she went for a walk near the river. The air was heavy with the scent of blooming shiuli and traffic exhaust. She watched the glow of lamps along the ghats and thought of the first protest she’d ever attended. It was during her college days in Krishnanagar, when a classmate had been harassed by a teacher. Misty had stood up during the student council meeting and read a poem about rage. Her voice had trembled, but she hadn’t stopped. That girl still lived inside her somewhere. Quiet now, but not gone.
When she returned home, Misty sat in front of her laptop and opened a new document. Not for an Instagram caption. Not for a brand. Just for herself. She began to write about her teenage years, the suffocating pressure of being “good,” of folding her legs while sitting, of not arguing with elders, of being told not to laugh too loud or dream too big. She wrote about her first period and how her aunt whispered the word like a crime. She wrote about the boy who had followed her on a bicycle every day for weeks, and how her father had blamed her tight kurti instead of confronting him.
The words poured out like rain breaking a dam. It was messy and imperfect. But it felt real.
The next morning, she emailed the magazine editor. “I’d like to rewrite my answers to your questions,” she said. “I want to be more honest. Less rehearsed.” The editor, a woman named Neha, replied within the hour: “Absolutely. We’d love that.”
For the next few days, Misty didn’t post anything new. She read. Simone Weil. Arundhati Roy. A Bengali translation of Nivedita’s letters. She listened to podcasts about grassroots movements in Bihar and Assam. She watched interviews of queer Dalit activists and sex workers organizing in Kolkata. She realized how little she had known about the real world of feminist activism—the kind that wasn’t hashtagged, filtered, or brandable.
At the same time, the vacuum of not being “visible” began to itch. Her inbox was quieter. A few of her fellow influencers had stopped tagging her. Her follower count stalled. Some collaborations were paused. One brand even messaged her, saying: “Hey Misty, your content’s feeling a bit… heavy lately. Any chance of some positive vibes reels soon?” Misty didn’t reply.
She felt herself being pulled in two directions—one part wanting to reclaim the algorithm, the other craving authenticity. Could she be both? Or would she always have to choose between being relatable and being real?
One afternoon, she met Tanaya, an old college friend visiting from Bangalore. Over plates of phuchka near Deshapriya Park, they spoke of their lives. Tanaya was now working with a feminist legal aid group, mostly helping domestic violence survivors. “It’s hard,” she said, “not just because of what they go through, but because of how invisible their pain is to the world. We’re too busy reacting to the latest controversy to notice the woman next door.”
Misty nodded. “On Instagram, I feel like I’m fighting battles with infographics and trending songs. But sometimes I wonder—am I actually helping anyone?”
Tanaya smiled gently. “You help when you’re honest. You help when you speak from the scar, not the wound.”
That night, Misty wrote again. This time, a letter addressed not to her followers but to herself. She wrote about her contradictions—how she hated loud men but sometimes missed Souvik’s voice, how she preached freedom but couldn’t break up completely, how she wanted to scream at her father but still craved his approval. She didn’t post it. She saved it.
But the next day, she did post something else. A photo of a wall in North Kolkata, painted with the faces of women protestors from Shahbagh, Shaheen Bagh, and Singur. The caption read, “Feminism isn’t pretty. It’s not always poetic. Sometimes it’s messy, angry, bitter, broken. But it’s always necessary.”
No filters. No hashtags.
Just truth.
Part 3
The week after her post about the wall mural, Misty found herself more restless than usual. She would wake early, sometimes before dawn, staring at the cracked ceiling above her bed and thinking about nothing in particular. Some days she scrolled endlessly through her feed, noticing how easily the world moved on. New reels. New trends. New faces in floral sarees holding placards about womanhood. A voice in her whispered that she was losing relevance. Another part of her whispered back—maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
The magazine feature finally went live that Friday. Titled “Real Voices: India’s Unfiltered Feminists”, it featured Misty alongside four others—an activist from Shillong, a trans woman from Hyderabad, a schoolteacher from Lucknow, and a student union leader from Pune. Misty’s part was raw. Neha, the editor, had kept most of her new answers intact. One line, in particular, had been turned into a pull quote: “I am not a brand. I am a bruise trying to heal.” Misty read it again and again, unsure if she felt proud or exposed.
Her friends began sharing the link. A few ex-colleagues messaged to say how “powerful” her words were. But the comments on the article itself were mixed. One reader had written, “She sounds like she’s romanticizing her confusion.” Another said, “Another privileged urban feminist pretending to be deep.” Misty tried not to care, but the words clung to her like lint. It was always like this—moments of clarity followed by waves of doubt.
That evening, she decided to take the metro to Jatin Das Park and visit an old bookstore she used to frequent. The shop was small and cluttered, run by a thin man with half-moon glasses and a lifelong allergy to plastic covers. Misty spent almost an hour there, flipping through dusty Bengali poetry, dog-eared feminist theory, a few forgotten literary journals. She picked up a tattered copy of Mahasweta Devi’s stories. The shopkeeper recognized her.
“Aren’t you that girl from Instagram?” he asked, not unkindly.
Misty hesitated. “I guess.”
“You wrote something about working women last year, right? My daughter shared it. She’s a nurse. Said it made her feel seen.”
Misty smiled, something inside her softening. She bought the book and walked out into the noisy street, unsure if she felt worthy of the compliment. But for a few moments, she did feel connected again—to something deeper than dopamine notifications.
Back at home, Misty tried calling her mother. It rang five times and then went unanswered. She left a voice note. “Ma, just wanted to say hi. And… I miss you.” Her mother rarely replied to voice notes. She didn’t fully understand Misty’s life, or why her daughter had left a steady job at the publishing house. They hadn’t spoken properly in months, not since Misty had posted about being in a “live-in relationship,” which the neighborhood aunties had dutifully reported to her mother.
After dinner, Misty sat down to write again. Not a caption. A story. About a young girl in a small town who used to write poetry on the backs of her school notebooks. About how she was told to sit “like a girl,” eat “like a girl,” and think “like a girl.” About how she once whispered the word “revolution” in her sleep and was slapped awake. She didn’t give the character a name. She didn’t need to.
Around midnight, Souvik called.
She stared at the screen. Declined.
Then he messaged: “Can we talk, Misty? Please.”
She typed and erased several replies. Finally, she sent: “About what?”
He wrote back: “I don’t know. I miss you, maybe. I saw your article.”
She felt her throat tighten. There was a time when she would have melted at this, even gone over to his place. But now she just sat there, staring at the screen, feeling that strange emptiness that comes when the thing you’ve waited for no longer feels worth wanting.
She didn’t reply.
Instead, she opened Instagram and posted a new picture—just the open pages of Mahasweta Devi’s book, a highlighted line that read, “If you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
No caption.
She closed the app and opened her email. There was a new message from a small Kolkata-based publisher. They were working on an anthology of modern feminist voices and had read the magazine article. Would she consider submitting something? An essay, maybe. Or even fiction.
Misty’s hands trembled slightly as she read the mail twice. She hadn’t published anything outside Instagram in over a year. She clicked “Reply” and wrote: “Yes. I would love to.”
She paused. Then added: “But only if I can write about my contradictions.”
The reply came five minutes later. “That’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
That night, Misty slept with the window open, the humid breeze brushing against her cheek. Somewhere far away, a temple bell rang. Somewhere closer, a drunk couple argued on the street. And somewhere inside her, a voice—shaky but clear—began to rise.
Not the voice of a flawless icon.
But that of a girl who was slowly learning to stop hiding behind filters.
Part 4
The morning air was thick with the promise of rain. Misty stood by her window, sipping lukewarm tea, watching the city stretch awake. The street below was its usual collage of chaos—schoolchildren in oversized uniforms, a chaiwala balancing ten clay cups, a woman yelling into her phone with a ferocity that only came from unpaid electricity bills. Kolkata moved like a poem with bad punctuation—rushed, broken, alive. Misty stared at it all, half-distracted, half-numb, still processing the email from last night.
A publication wanted her. Not her profile. Not her brand. Not her curated feminism. They wanted her contradictions.
She opened a blank document and stared at the blinking cursor. What could she write that hadn’t already been posted, reposted, packaged, and performed? Her mind raced through all the carefully constructed posts she’d ever made—quotes about empowerment, soft-focus selfies with rage-filled captions, protest photos where she wasn’t even present. She had built an identity around visibility. But now that someone was asking for her voice and not her face, she didn’t know where to begin.
She decided to go for a walk. No makeup, no filter, no stories. Just herself in a kurta and sandals, notebook in hand. She passed the corner paan shop where the owner still called her “chhoto didi,” even though she hadn’t bought anything from him in years. He smiled and nodded. She nodded back. It struck her then how many people saw her without ever knowing her name, how much of her life was composed of anonymous glances.
At Deshapriya Park, she sat on a bench and took out her notebook. She began writing: “What does feminism look like when you’re not looking at it? Maybe it looks like a mother hiding bruises with concealer. Or a girl refusing to marry before twenty-five. Or a boy who learns to say sorry without being told to.”
The words flowed more freely than she expected. She scribbled down thoughts, images, half-memories. A girl learning to cycle in secret. A college friend who’d had an abortion without telling anyone. Her own refusal to touch her father’s feet when he visited her last year.
When she returned home, her cheeks were flushed from the humidity and a strange, unfamiliar exhilaration. She didn’t open Instagram. Instead, she opened the document again and typed it all in, editing as she went, shaping the raw mess into something almost literary.
The next day, she emailed her draft to the editor.
That afternoon, she met Shalini again at their usual café. Shalini had just come from court, her kurta slightly wrinkled, her eyes sharp as ever. Misty showed her the draft.
“This is your best work yet,” Shalini said, sipping her black coffee.
“You think?” Misty asked, unsure.
“I know. It doesn’t sound like a performance. It sounds like you.”
Misty exhaled slowly. “It’s strange. I’ve never felt so scared and so sure at the same time.”
“That’s what truth does,” Shalini said. “It rips you open and stitches you back differently.”
They talked for another hour, mostly about things that had nothing to do with feminism. Love, rent, politics, menstrual cramps, a new indie film they both wanted to see. It felt grounding, like friendship in its truest form—not built on image but on shared breath.
That evening, Misty’s mother called back.
“Tomar post dekhlam,” she said, her voice cautious but not cold. “Bhalo likhechish.”
Misty was stunned for a moment. “Which one?”
“Oi magazine article. Amar para-r Bonya-r meye bollo.”
Misty chuckled. Of course. The neighborhood grapevine always delivered faster than the internet.
Her mother hesitated, then added, “Tui ja likhish, sob bujhte parina. But I’m proud. Bujhli?”
It was the first time she’d ever heard her mother use the word proud without irony.
Misty blinked back tears. “Thank you, Ma.”
They spoke for fifteen minutes. Not much. But not nothing either.
Later that night, Misty opened Instagram again. Her inbox was mostly quiet, her latest post had average engagement, and a few followers had sent voice notes asking if she was okay—she wasn’t as “active” lately. She smiled at the irony. How could she explain that she had never been more active in her entire life?
She posted a photo from her walk—a crumpled hibiscus flower on a wet pavement. The caption read: “I’m not here to impress you. I’m here to unlearn myself.”
She switched off her phone after posting. No checking likes. No refreshing.
Instead, she picked up her notebook again and wrote the next line of her essay. This one was for a second submission. The publisher had already asked her if she’d consider expanding the piece into a small collection.
She wrote: “Every time I called myself a feminist, I forgot to mention I was still afraid of being alone at night. But I also forgot to mention I went out anyway.”
Outside, the rain finally began to fall.
Part 5
Rain had turned the city into a giant, soaking canvas. The gutters gurgled, the streets shimmered in reflections, and the usual honking had taken on a sluggish, tired tone. Misty sat on her balcony, her laptop balanced on her lap, watching people wade through water as if it were routine, which it was. Nothing surprised Kolkata in June. Not thunder. Not heartbreak.
Her inbox had grown quiet again. The initial flurry after the magazine feature had slowed. The publisher had replied, “Your essay received good response. We’d be happy to include a second piece, if you’re ready.” Misty had stared at that line for an hour. If you’re ready. As if that were something you could ever be.
She hadn’t spoken to Souvik since his last message. He hadn’t followed up either. She wasn’t sure whether she felt relieved or disappointed. But there was a memory that kept returning to her—one of them in his kitchen, eating instant noodles at midnight, laughing about a fight they couldn’t even remember. That memory had no hashtags. It hadn’t been documented. But it felt more permanent than any of her 90,000 likes.
She opened her notes folder and began drafting the second essay. The words came slowly. She wrote about the time she’d gotten groped on a crowded bus in Salt Lake and how she’d frozen instead of shouting. About the shame she carried for not reacting “fiercely enough.” She wrote about the guilt of blocking out her trauma because it didn’t fit the aesthetic of her grid. She even wrote about the troll who had once messaged her, “Feminism is just loneliness in disguise,” and how part of her had wanted to scream yes, maybe, sometimes.
Midway through writing, her phone vibrated. A message from Pritha, a fellow feminist influencer who had once co-hosted a workshop with Misty: “Hey, can we talk? Something weird’s going on with that brand we both worked with—FaeRitual.”
Misty called her immediately.
Pritha sounded tense. “They’re using our videos without permission. Re-editing them into new content without credit. And they’ve been reposting an old story I did—only they’ve filtered out my bit about caste issues.”
Misty’s stomach twisted. “That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah. And when I DM’ed them, they said it was a glitch. Classic gaslight. I’m talking to a couple of others who’ve worked with them. We’re thinking of going public.”
Misty hesitated. She had done two campaigns with FaeRitual last year. High-paying, glossy, but she’d always had a bad feeling about the way they stripped activism into pastel graphics. She thought about all the times she’d reshared their reels, smiling, proud, complicit.
Pritha asked, “Would you be willing to speak up too? If you’re not comfortable, I understand.”
There was a silence.
Misty said quietly, “No. I’ll speak.”
After the call, she sat still for a long time. Her mind replayed the brand emails, the staged shoots, the script changes. She’d once been asked to wear a nose ring and hold a placard saying ‘Bold is Beautiful’—then told to tone down the anger in her caption. It had felt wrong, but she hadn’t questioned it. At the time, she’d thought of it as survival. Now it just felt like betrayal.
That evening, she made tea and stared out at the grey sky. There were pigeons nesting in the ledge above her window—two chicks with ugly little beaks and a mother who kept flying in and out with scraps. She watched the rhythm of it. The mess, the persistence. She realized this was what real work looked like. Not glamour. Not applause. Just showing up again and again, wings soaked but determined.
She posted a story later that night—a black background with white text: “Sometimes, the brands we collaborate with end up silencing the very voices they claim to support. That silence is violence too.”
No tags. No drama. Just truth.
The next morning, her DMs were flooded. Some supportive. Some angry. One follower wrote, “You’ve changed.” Misty replied: “Yes.” Another said, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds.” She left that one unanswered. By afternoon, four other influencers had joined the call-out. A feminist page with over 300k followers reposted their statements. FaeRitual released a one-line PR note: “We value all voices and are addressing the issue internally.”
Misty didn’t care for their statement. What mattered was that something cracked open. And from that crack, a conversation began.
That night, she wrote again.
This time, the piece wasn’t just about her. It was about the quiet erasure of inconvenient truths. About the performance of allyship. About how rage was often filtered into ‘relatability’ until it became nothing. She wrote as if no one were watching. Then she emailed it to the publisher with a subject line that simply read: “Second submission.”
Later, she opened Instagram and deleted ten old posts—sponsored, sanitized, disconnected. It felt like pruning a tree. Painful, necessary.
She didn’t replace them.
She closed the app and went to bed with the fan humming above her, her inbox open on her laptop, and her hands smelling faintly of ink and ginger.
Outside, the pigeons cooed. The city slept. And in the darkness, Misty found herself breathing not for the grid, but for herself.
Part 6
Misty didn’t open Instagram for three days.
It wasn’t a planned detox or an act of rebellion. She simply didn’t feel the urge. The app sat silently on her home screen, its pink-orange logo quietly humming like a room she had left but forgot to lock. For once, her fingers didn’t twitch toward it during silences. She let the silence stretch. There was a strange beauty in being invisible.
Instead, she filled her time differently. Mornings were for reading—poetry, mostly. Kamala Das. Warsan Shire. Ranjit Hoskote. Midday walks became longer, slower. She started noticing things again: the uneven footpath tiles, the smell of wet laundry, the teenage boy who sold sugarcane juice outside the ATM with a smile that had no hurry. She even cooked—a small miracle. Lentils with garlic, rice with ghee. The simple warmth of real food.
On the fourth day, she received a courier—a box wrapped in brown paper, no logo. Inside was the anthology she had contributed to, Telling Her Story, hot off the press. She ran her fingers across the cover, thick with matte texture. Her name was in the contents list. Misty Dey, page 74. Her heart thudded as she flipped to the page. There it was. In ink. In permanence.
She sat down and read her own piece aloud. The words felt older, heavier. Like they belonged to someone who had once been her. She didn’t know if they still did. But they mattered. That much she could admit.
Later that evening, she called Shalini.
“I got the book,” Misty said.
“You holding it in your hand?”
“Yes.”
“Then remember this feeling. It’s the only one that doesn’t expire with an algorithm.”
They didn’t talk for long. Shalini was prepping for a bail hearing the next morning. But before hanging up, she added, “You’ve got more in you. Don’t stop now.”
Misty smiled, quietly letting the praise settle where it used to deflect.
That night, she reopened Instagram—not with anxiety, but curiosity. The notifications had piled up. Messages. Mentions. Follower drops. A few brand DMs that had gone silent after her public post. She scrolled through them with detachment, pausing only at one message request from a username she didn’t recognize: @kalighatcanvas.
“Hi Misty. I’m a visual artist. I read your piece in Telling Her Story. It reminded me of my sister. Would you consider collaborating on a small project? No money, no marketing. Just art.”
She clicked on the profile. The posts were haunting, raw. Sketches of women in fractured frames—some headless, some faceless, all silent. It felt like someone had drawn the noise she carried inside her.
Misty replied: “Yes. Tell me more.”
He messaged back instantly. “It’s an exhibit. Just one night. We’re calling it Unfiltered.”
The word stuck in her chest.
They chatted for an hour—planning nothing, sketching ideas in text. Maybe she could write something new. Maybe she could record a spoken piece. Maybe it didn’t matter what it became as long as it wasn’t built for applause.
When the conversation ended, Misty opened a blank document. She wrote the words: This story doesn’t begin with anger. It begins with a girl who was told not to take up space.
The next morning, she got a call from her father.
It surprised her. He rarely called. Usually it was her mother who dialed, and he spoke from a distance, audible but emotionally remote. But this time, it was his voice. Direct.
“I read your article,” he said in Bengali. His voice was calm, but there was a stiffness to it. “Bonya-r baba gave me the magazine.”
Misty’s breath caught. “Okay.”
There was a pause.
“I didn’t understand all of it,” he admitted. “But I understood you were speaking your mind.”
She waited.
“That’s good,” he added. Then, softer, “We don’t always have to agree.”
She wanted to cry, but her voice remained even. “Thank you, Baba.”
It was the closest thing to acceptance she had ever heard from him.
After the call, she took a long shower, letting the water beat against her back like forgiveness. Her phone buzzed on the bathroom shelf. A message from Souvik. Not just a line, but a paragraph.
Misty, I’ve been thinking about what you said, or didn’t say. I know I messed up. I saw the book. You’re doing what I couldn’t—living with honesty. I miss you, but more than that, I respect you. If you ever want to meet—not as lovers, but just two people who once tried—I’d like that.
She dried her hands and typed: Maybe. But I’m still trying to meet myself first.
Then she turned off the phone.
She went back to her desk, opened her draft, and began to write again. Her voice was steadier now. Less curated. More wounded. But also more whole.
She didn’t know if she would return to posting every day. Or to being an influencer. Maybe she already wasn’t one anymore. But she felt something shift in her—like breath finding its rhythm after panic.
For the first time in a long while, Misty wasn’t trying to be an icon.
She was trying to be real.
And real, she was learning, was enough.
Part 7
The evening of the art exhibit arrived without fuss. Kolkata had dried up a bit after the rains, leaving behind wet walls and streets that still smelled of damp plaster. Misty stood before a large mirror in her bedroom, adjusting the silver chain around her neck. She had chosen a simple cotton saree—grey with indigo borders—and kohl that she smudged lightly, not for effect, but because that’s how her hands moved now. There was no plan to be photographed tonight. No plans to post anything. She was simply going.
The gallery was a small space in a narrow lane off Southern Avenue, white-walled and dimly lit, with soft jazz playing from a Bluetooth speaker. The name of the show—Unfiltered—was scribbled in black ink on handmade paper at the entrance. A group of young artists and visitors buzzed gently inside, holding paper cups of chai, discussing linework and metaphors as though they mattered more than money. Misty walked in slowly, unsure of how she fit into this version of the world.
She spotted Arpan—@kalighatcanvas—near the far wall, standing in front of a charcoal drawing of a girl in a crumbling sari, her face covered with hashtags. Arpan was slight, wore thick glasses, and had a calmness about him that Misty envied. He greeted her with a nod and a warm smile, nothing performative.
“I was worried you wouldn’t come,” he said.
“I was worried I would,” she replied.
They both laughed, softly.
He led her to the small installation they had created together. A screen showed a looped video of Misty’s voice reading fragments from her writings—some from the published essay, some newer, more intimate. The visuals were minimal: black watercolour slowly bleeding across white pages, like secrets dissolving. On the wall beside it, her words were hand-painted in uneven brushstrokes: “This voice is not brave. It’s just tired of pretending.”
A woman stood in front of it for a long time, arms folded. When Misty came up beside her, the woman turned.
“Are you the writer?”
Misty nodded. The woman smiled faintly. “That line—about pretending. I felt that.”
Misty didn’t say thank you. She simply said, “Me too.”
By 9 p.m., the room was full. Artists, students, random walk-ins. No influencers. No live sessions. Just presence. Misty stood mostly to the side, sipping water, her notebook tucked into her cloth bag. Every now and then, someone would approach her, wanting to talk—not about her following, but about her words.
For the first time, she felt read.
Arpan came to her again as the crowd began to thin. “You know,” he said, “you’re braver than you think.”
“No,” she replied. “I think I’m just more tired of lying than I am afraid of the truth.”
He nodded, as though that was a kind of courage too.
After the show, Misty walked home. She refused a ride. She wanted the night air, the slow stretch of her own feet on the pavement. The city, too, had quieted down. Rickshaws curled into themselves, tea stalls wiped clean. Her phone buzzed once—a message from Shalini: “Proud of you. That voice? Keep using it.”
Back home, Misty washed her face, peeled off the saree, and stood in front of the mirror again. Her skin looked tired but clear. Her eyes carried less armor. She saw herself as she was: not powerful, not perfect, but present.
She opened Instagram, not to post, but to scroll.
The algorithm, starved of her recent activity, had begun throwing random reels her way—makeup hacks, couples pranks, protests in Paris, a woman teaching how to cry on cue. Misty watched for a minute, then exited. She typed out a story instead: “Being seen is not the same as being heard. Thank you, Unfiltered.” Then she closed the app again.
The next morning, she received an email from her editor. The second piece had been accepted. The collection was forming. “You’ve found a voice, Misty,” it read. “Now trust it.”
She replied: I don’t know if it’s mine yet. But I’m learning how to carry it.
That day, she didn’t post anything. She didn’t check her analytics. She didn’t worry about engagement.
Instead, she called her mother. They spoke about ordinary things—the price of tomatoes, the neighbour’s new gate, how her cousin was planning to elope. Her mother didn’t mention the book. But her voice was softer now, less guarded. As if her daughter’s changes were starting to feel less like rebellion and more like evolution.
In the evening, Misty sat down to write again—not a post, not an essay. Just thoughts.
She wrote:
There are days when I want to vanish from all platforms. To be a woman with no handle, no followers, no profile. Just flesh, breath, opinion. There are days I think that is the truest feminism I know: the right to disappear. And the courage to return on my own terms.
She paused. Let the silence settle.
Then she wrote one more line: Tomorrow, maybe I’ll go unseen. And maybe that will be okay.
Part 8
Misty began keeping a notebook beside her bed again. It wasn’t fancy—just ruled pages bound in a cheap brown cover. She wrote in it every night before sleeping, not for followers or future posts, but to listen to her own thoughts as they stumbled out. The habit reminded her of who she was before she’d discovered filters, before she’d learned to caption grief.
One entry read: Feminism taught me that silence is learned. But unlearning it is not just about speaking—it’s about knowing when not to perform.
The days started to stretch differently. She had fewer collaborations now. A few agencies had quietly stopped reaching out. One had even sent her a long, vague email about “shifting brand values.” Misty hadn’t replied. Her bank balance dipped lower than it had in months, and for a moment, she panicked. But then she reminded herself: she had once survived on part-time tutoring and metro tokens. This version of her life wasn’t unfamiliar—it was just less decorated.
She took up a short writing workshop at a community center in Gariahat. Once a week, she sat in a circle with ten girls between 18 and 25—some students, some housewives, one who worked in a tailoring shop—and they talked about stories. Not literature. Just stories. About the man who followed one of them for six bus stops. About the aunt who asked if she’d gotten “dark” on purpose. About the shame of desire and the violence of not naming it.
Misty didn’t teach. She facilitated. She listened.
One of the girls, Ayesha, once said, “Didi, Instagram doesn’t care about women like us. We’re not sexy enough to sell anger.”
Misty didn’t know what to say. She only nodded. Ayesha had said what she herself had never dared to.
That night, Misty wrote in her notebook: Maybe real feminism is not the noise we make online but the echoes we leave in small rooms.
One afternoon, while walking back from the workshop, she ran into Souvik. It was at a roadside bookstall near Rashbehari. He was holding a copy of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and wore a washed-out blue kurta that looked exactly like the one he used to wear during their lazy Sundays together. The meeting wasn’t cinematic. There was no background music. Just the clatter of autos and the vendor shouting prices.
They looked at each other and then smiled.
“I read your piece,” he said. “The second one.”
She nodded. “And?”
“You sound more like you.”
“I feel more like me.”
They didn’t hug. Just stood side by side for a few minutes.
He hesitated. “If I said I was sorry… would it matter?”
Misty looked up. “Maybe. But I don’t think we’re in that chapter anymore.”
He didn’t push. They spoke for a few minutes about books and rain and deadlines. Then he paid for his novel, wished her well, and left.
Misty stood there for a while longer. She didn’t feel broken. Or victorious. Just… still.
Back at home, she posted a black-and-white picture of a pencil and notebook. No caption. It was her first post in two weeks. It got less than half the usual likes. But three DMs came in—young women from small towns, saying they’d started journaling after reading her essay. One wrote: “I thought my thoughts didn’t matter because they weren’t aesthetic. Now I know they’re still worth writing.”
Misty replied to each message with care.
Later that week, her father called again. This time to ask if she would visit them during Durga Puja. Her mother took the phone halfway through the call and spoke about preparing luchi and alur dom, as if inviting Misty back meant no conditions, only food.
Something shifted again. Not reconciliation. But room.
And then, one night, she sat down and wrote the first draft of her third essay. It began with the line: I am not who you follow. I am who I survived to become.
The piece was raw. Less polished than the others. It spoke of the years she had tried to be palatable. The selfies she deleted because her acne showed. The abuse she never posted about because it would “derail her narrative.” The love she lost not because of feminism, but because of the fear of being known too well.
When she finished writing, it was past midnight. The fan spun in slow, lazy circles above her. The city outside was hushed, save for the occasional barking of street dogs and the clink of a late-night tea stall being packed up.
She closed her laptop.
This time, she didn’t check her phone. She didn’t wonder if she’d gain back the followers she’d lost. She didn’t worry if her words would go viral.
She just breathed.
And in that breath, Misty realized something simple and startling.
She was no longer hiding behind feminism.
She was finally beginning to live it.
Part 9
Durga Puja arrived like it always did—loud, lush, and golden. Kolkata glowed in strings of light and the slow rhythm of dhak beats, the scent of shiuli flowers floating in the air like the city’s own perfume. Misty stood at the window of her childhood bedroom in Salt Lake, watching children play with sparklers. Her suitcase lay unopened on the bed. Her mother had already called twice from the kitchen to ask if she wanted tea, then again to ask what kind of shampoo she was using now.
It was strange being back in this house—not because it had changed, but because she had. The walls were the same peach color. Her bookshelf still held her old school trophies and that dusty glass painting she made in Class 8. But the silence between her and her parents had thinned into something fragile and real. They no longer filled the room with nervous conversation. They let her sit with her quiet.
That evening, she accompanied her parents to the para pandal. Her mother adjusted Misty’s pallu twice before they left, muttering about how girls these days didn’t know how to “carry themselves.” But there was no bitterness in her tone. It was just her way of saying, I still want to protect you.
The pandal was a chaotic burst of noise—loudspeakers playing remixed devotional songs, children running barefoot on the canvas floor, old uncles sitting with plates of bhog. Misty stood with her hands folded, looking up at the idol. Durga stood tall, serene, but fierce, her lion mid-snarl, her weapons gleaming. Misty didn’t pray. But she felt something settle inside her—an ancestral muscle relaxing.
She overheard someone say, “That’s their daughter. The one who writes controversial things online.”
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t turn.
That night, her mother served dinner in silence, only asking if she wanted more rice. Her father cleared his throat once, and then said, “Your Ma reads your posts now. Secretly. She doesn’t like to admit it.”
Her mother rolled her eyes but smiled faintly. “Some of it is very angry,” she said. “But it doesn’t feel fake.”
It was the closest thing to approval Misty could ever have hoped for.
Back in her room, she checked her inbox. The third essay had been accepted. The editor wrote: There’s something quieter and more devastating about this one. It doesn’t ask to be liked. It just asks to be heard. We want to run it without cuts.
Misty closed her eyes. She didn’t celebrate. She didn’t post a screenshot. She just sat there, her fingers touching the wood of her desk like she was anchoring herself to something real.
The next morning, as the city burst into Sindoor Khela and drums and camera flashes, Misty wandered away from the crowd and sat on the edge of the local park, watching a group of teenage girls rehearse a dance for the visarjan procession. They were not graceful. But they were trying hard. Their faces full of nervous pride. Misty remembered what it was like to be sixteen and aching to be seen.
A little girl, no more than five, came and sat beside her. She wore a glittering pink lehenga and had kajal smudged around her eyes.
“Are you a didi from TV?” she asked.
Misty laughed. “No. Just a didi who writes.”
“About what?”
Misty paused. “About girls like you.”
The girl considered this. “Why?”
“Because people don’t always listen to us.”
The child nodded as if this made perfect sense. Then she ran back to her friends.
Misty sat there for a long time, not doing anything, not performing, not posting. Just watching a city that always danced through its wounds. The red of sindoor, the clang of bells, the ancient rhythm of celebration—it all felt like a language she had finally stopped translating. She was part of it now, not in the way she used to be, but in the way that mattered.
Back at home, she helped her mother wash the plates. They didn’t talk much, but they moved around each other without awkwardness. Later, her mother handed her a folded cotton saree.
“I kept this for you,” she said. “You used to love the blue in it.”
Misty unfolded it and ran her fingers across the fabric. It was soft, worn, smelling faintly of old cupboards and camphor. She didn’t remember loving it, but she didn’t correct her mother. Some myths were best left untouched.
That night, Misty opened Instagram. She typed a story:
“Sometimes feminism looks like protest. Sometimes it looks like peeling garlic beside your mother in a kitchen where you were once only a daughter.”
She hit post.
Then she went back to her notebook and wrote something else:
There are no perfect feminists. Only women who are learning where to place their rage, and how to turn it into something softer than shame and stronger than silence.
She closed the notebook.
She didn’t know if the world would read her the same way again. But she had begun reading herself differently. That, for now, was enough.
Part 10
The morning after Durga Visarjan, the city wore a tired, quiet face. The streets were littered with petals, broken idols, and scattered sindoor. The air smelled of incense and damp earth, heavy with a kind of exhausted grace. Misty sat on the terrace of her Salt Lake home, wrapped in the blue saree her mother had given her. The fabric was worn, familiar, and somehow comforting.
She was scrolling through Instagram, but this time differently. Not looking for validation or approval, not measuring likes or comments, but simply seeing. The feed was a chaotic mix: protest videos from faraway cities, memes about feminism, pictures of breakfast plates and sleepy cats. Among them, a few messages from her readers, young women from small towns, sharing their own stories of silence, courage, and awakening.
One message stood out. It was from a girl named Meera, from a village in Bihar. “Your words made me tell my mother about the abuse I faced. We don’t talk much, but now she holds my hand differently.” Misty stared at the screen, breath catching. The weight of her words, once just a way to fill the silence inside herself, had travelled far beyond her little bedroom.
She closed the app, set the phone down.
For years, she had believed that feminism meant loud voices and sharp edges, that power was a performance crafted for the crowd. But now, she saw it as something quieter—an unfinished conversation between a woman and herself, her mother, her city, and the strangers she would never meet but who carried the same burdens.
Her phone buzzed. It was an invitation—a panel discussion on women’s voices in the digital age. The organizers wanted her to speak. A small auditorium in the city, a few hundred seats. The kind of place where her words would reach real people, face to face.
Misty hesitated. The old fear of being watched, judged, dissected. But then she thought of all the girls who had messaged her. Of the woman in the gallery who had said, “I felt that.” Of her mother who read her posts secretly. Of Ayesha from the workshop who had said, “We’re not sexy enough to sell anger.”
She typed back: I’ll come.
The night of the panel arrived, and Misty stood backstage, heart thumping, hands clammy. The spotlight felt both cruel and kind. When her turn came, she stepped up and looked at the sea of faces—curious, expectant, weary.
She spoke not like an influencer or a performer, but like a woman who had stumbled through darkness and found fragments of light. She told stories—of online battles and offline silences, of losing followers and gaining voices, of anger and tenderness tangled like vines. She spoke about the impossibility of perfection, the necessity of rest, and the power in choosing when to appear and when to disappear.
When she finished, the room was silent for a moment, then erupted in applause—not the loud, fleeting kind, but the slow, steady kind that settles in the chest.
Later, a young woman approached her, eyes shining. “Thank you. For being real.”
Misty smiled. “That’s all I ever wanted to be.”
Back at home, she sat on the terrace again, the city lights flickering below. She opened her notebook and wrote:
I am not a hashtag. I am not a movement. I am a woman who has learned that feminism is not a battle cry but a quiet breath between storms. It is messy, it is imperfect, but it is mine.
She looked out into the night, feeling a strange peace.
The journey was far from over. There would be days of doubt, rage, and grief. There would be moments when the old self would call, tempting her back into the performance.
But for now, Misty knew one thing clearly: she was no longer hiding. She was living.
And that was enough.
—-
