Okay so the reading that stood out to me the most this week was actually An Unkindness of Ghosts, but I wanted to write about Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay’s “Misfit” in part because I found it to not only be very intriguing, but also because I found myself struggling to understand what it was saying. Now this of course is not an insult to the author, but rather an admission that I myself am not the best when it comes to decoding the meaning of poetry. That being said, I’d like to offer up what I think the poem is saying. The poem opens with lines essentially stating how the Earth revolves round and round, and from it stars recede, night and day are formed, and nothing goes wrong. However, Mukhopadhyay immediately follows this up with a ferocious contradiction in which he says that when he himself spins round and round, men and women stare and him and they label him a misfit. I believe Mukhopadhyay is using this stark contrast as a way to provide some type of commentary on Autism and how it is perceived by our society. Maybe he is saying that when the world turns round and round, no one bats an eye, but when he turns round and round, he’s suddenly labeled as an outcast? I may be reaching but it’s the best I was able to come up with. This then brings me to the last two stanzas of the poem. Mukhopadhyay turns into the wind after being called a misfit, but I am struggling to understand the significance of it or what it means. The final stanza of the poem leads me to believe that I am at least heading in the right direction, but I can’t say I know for sure.
If anyone is able to clarify the meaning of the poem for me or offer up their interpretation of it, I would love to hear it and I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
