New Direction

From a sleepy village near Kanpur to the runways of Paris, Rahul Mishra has charted a spectacular course. And now he’s ready for the next leg of the journey, finds Maanya Sachdeva

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Rahul Mishra is waiting for his order of fries and cold coffee to arrive when we meet at his Kala Ghoda store in Mumbai. Dressed in black, the Delhi-based designer has just finished judging the Circular Design Challenge at Lakmé Fashion Week Summer/Resort 2019, and is refuelling quickly before he makes his way back to the front row. His heart, however, is still at home. Mishra’s daughter, Aarna, is his whole world now, and the new father has adjusted his workday to just five or six hours to spend more time with her. “It’s very rightly said that kids need their parents differently at different times in their lives. When she is a teenager, she will not need us as much, then I will probably get 18 hours to work,” he laughs.

Unable to stop himself, Mishra pulls up paintings made by Aarna on his phone, scrolling through them with a smile. On whether his three-year-old daughter has a natural knack for design and art, he says “I think every child does; our education kills curiosity and creativity, and our expectations from our children also kill the creativity they are born with.”