Munni Monster

Mishti’s life is good. She has a best friend (never mind if said best friend is a little annoying), parents who love her, and a grandmother whom she adores. Everything’s perfect–until Munni, her grandmother’s cousin, comes to stay–no, live–with them.
And suddenly, things are not idyllic anymore. Munni is a weirdo. She is old, but behaves like a baby. She dares to come into Munni’s private cave under the dining table. And Mishti has to sleep like a sausage between her parents even though she is “of age”, to use a phrase she’s just learnt.

And that is the crux of the story. Munni is a monster, and Mishti must figure out how to get rid of her. She wishes Munni were dead.

Munni Monster is a lovely book, empathetic and heartwarming. It worked for me so much better than Madhurima Vidyarthi’s My Grandmother’s Masterpiece. Cuteness in children’s stories is not something I enjoy, and Munni Monster steers clear of it. It feels authentic. The emotions Mishti experiences, and the way she acts on them, is perfect. I was drawn into Mishti’s voice and felt her anger, her frustration, her confusion–everything.

Cerebral palsy is an important theme too, and I love that the term isn’t mentioned in the story, except in the author’s note at the end. I’ve read very few books featuring characters with cerebral palsy – Out of My Mind and Welcome to Nowhere are the only ones I can thing of at the moment.
Reading about an older person with this condition, in a story set in India, was significantly different, and I loved it. I love how Munni comes alive to us even as Mishti’s eyes slowly open to the unfairness of the world around her. Without shying away from difficult subjects, Munni Monster takes us through all the baggage that cerebral palsy carries with it. And yet, it ends with hope, and that, for me, is the most beautiful thing of all.