(PULL QUOTE) “So I had my own hardships. We grew up very poor and even as my dad became very well-known, he didn’t spoil us. He always taught us to get everything from our own sweat.”-Mishka Vasanti Puran
SHE never had the “luxury” of attending nursery school because the family was so “unbelievably” poor. In fact, at one point in her life, she and her family of four lived in London’s Thorncliff Hotel. And this name says it all. The living conditions here were indeed “thorn-like.” It was a very derelict hotel that refugees were allowed to stay in. 

Now 32-years-old, she has already established herself as a prominent lawyer, currently doing civil cases while at times dabbling in criminal practice.

Meet the beautiful Mishka Vasanti Puran, who credits her humble beginnings for everything that she has managed to achieve in life so far.
She was born in Guyana, but at the age of five, she left in 1985 with her father Vic, mother Sharon and a sibling to go to London. The family moved there to facilitate her dad’s law studies.
“I don’t believe in those days there was a law school. There was no UWI. You would have had to go to Barbados but you would have had to been incredibly rich because you couldn’t work there. So there was no way he (her dad) could have afforded to support the family. He already had two children at the time. Hence, he took the London option. In London, they allowed you to work so that’s what allowed him to graduate and support the family,” Mishka explained in an interview with the Sunday Chronicle.
So Mishka started school in London when she was about five. This was after the family moved to a different location. During their time at Thorncliff, Mishka said her parents took the opportunity to save money.
Eventually, the family moved to Trinidad and spent two years there. Meanwhile, Vic continued his studies. After successfully completing such, they returned to Guyana. At this point, Mishka completed her primary education at F.E Pollard in Kitty.
Asked how the London trip was made possible in the first place, in view of their financial constraints, Mishka explained: “K. Rahaman and Sons was very close to my dad and still are very close to the family. They helped my dad with his ticket to London. He went over there with one pair of shoes. He always tells us that story and his shoe had a hole. And he was working and going to school. My mom’s family helped us to pay for the other tickets. My mom worked to support us as well. For one year when dad wasn’t working, she worked to support the entire family.”
Sadly, Vic and Sharon divorced in time, but Mishka didn’t allow these new troubling circumstances to get her down.
“At F.E Pollard, I came off as top student for my year and this for me was very remarkable because it was the same year that my parents got divorced. It was a tough year but one thing I learned from both my parents is to be very strong in the face of adversity.”
Looking back, Mishka believes that the tough life she experienced while growing up helped to mould her to take on any difficulty that would come her way.
After leaving FE Pollard, she secured a place at Queen’s College 1992 to 1999 and proceeded to write her Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) and A-Level exams. She pressed on to the University of Guyana and then to Huge Wooding Law School. She graduated and was called to the bar in 2005.
She is the eldest of four children and is married to Viraj Jugdeo.

My Own Sweat
Mishka said her dad never spoiled any of his children, but taught them to work for anything that they wished to have.

“So I had my own hardships. We grew up very poor and even as my dad became very well-known, he didn’t spoil us. He always taught us to get everything from our own sweat.”
When she first came out as a lawyer, Mishka said many people thought she had everything made for her already. But she said this was not the case as everything she achieved came from her own strength, apart from the recognition she got from carrying her father’s name.
“People might not know this but my office has always been separate from my dad. Everything that I have achieved or will achieve is based on my own drive, my own ambition and my own success.”
Mishka started off in the criminal field but currently, she does mostly civil cases. These include matters dealing with estates, divorce, etc. She also does contentious matters having to do with applications for custody, maintenance, and property issues.
Initially, she wanted to become a lawyer so as to emulate her father. But in time, she developed her own appreciation for the field. Initially, the intention was to use her office to assist women and children. “That was my idea based on the injustices I would have seen meted out to women and children while I was growing up.”
In fact, one of her long term goals is to set up a legal clinic where she can provide free services for such ones. “As it is now, I do my own legal aid. I don’t collaborate with the Legal Aid Clinic in any way but if people are of limited means, I still assist them as best as I could.”
Mishka’s office is located at Lot 105 Smyth Street, Werk-en-Rust, just opposite Central High School.

Contentment and Determination
Throughout her hardships as a child, Mishka said she always entertained the hope that one day she was going to get out of poverty. And she credits her father for having thought so.

“He always said where there is life, there is hope. He always said failure is a luxury for the rich. We are not rich, therefore you cannot fail. So I always knew I would pass and succeed because I didn’t have any cushion to fall back on.”
Looking back, she said qualities such as contentment and determination helped her to succeed through her bad days.
“I compare myself to coal. It is just a black, lacklustre seemingly fragile object. But after years of pressure applied to it, the end result is a diamond. And that’s what I like to think; that my struggle is me evolving. I’m not saying that I am a diamond but me evolving into this precious thing that I am proud of.”
Describing her personality, she said: “You can build a bridge with one brick at a time. That’s my take on life. I’m very simple. I don’t require much to please. If there is a spill, I’m the first to clean it with the cleaners. I don’t think of myself as being better than anybody. And I don’t think anyone is better than me. I am very determined.”
“Sometimes people say I am refreshingly down to earth but it is because I have been through so much. I know what it is like to know only what second hand clothes are. I used to get unisex clothes so that my brother can wear them when I passed them on,” she recalled.
“I don’t need to be measure by anybody. I don’t need to feel accepted or I don’t need society to say that I’ve made it because I know that I have already made it, having regard to my past.”
As for advice she would give to people like herself, she said: “Have a broad picture of what you would like to become. Obstacles will always be there no matter how rich or poor you are. As long as you can dream and see it, it will happen. In my opinion, we are all born with the same abilities, provided of course if you were born with special needs or whatever. It is just how you choose to use it.”

World shattered to pieces
Their world was shattered to pieces when they heard that their dad had died along the East Coast Demerara road on the night of October 15, 2012. He was incidentally celebrating his 57th birthday that day.
Ever since then, the children (Mishka, Mikhaila, Maqsood, and Mikel) of former prominent lawyer Vicramaditya ‘Vic’ Puran are still distraught over their father’s death and are wondering just how to pick up the pieces and move on.
Mishka, like the rest of her siblings, loves her father deeply and thinks about him on each and every day that passes.
Mr. Puran, who lived at Barr Street, Kitty, purportedly died after his blue Toyota Tundra careened off the Mahaicony Branch Road and ended up in a canal at Esau and Jacob, Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara.
He was reportedly returning from his pig farm, which he had earlier visited and had taken food for the animals. He travelled to the farm daily.
A popular theory at the time was that Mr. Puran died of drowning after his vehicle went into the canal. But his family begs to differ. In fact, his other daughter, Mikhaila, had issued a press statement in which she said she was convinced that her father was killed.
Mishka was one of the first persons on the scene and she recalled a number of things that proves to the Puran’s family that her father was murdered.

Nothing legitimate
“I don’t believe. I know that he was killed,” Mishka told the Chronicle. After his vehicle was pulled out of the trench, she saw that the seats were not wet. “The trench was very shallow. He purportedly spent hours in the trench. I spend half an hour in my bath tub and I come out with pruned skin. His skin wasn’t pruny,” she observed.

Furthermore, all of the seats were still clean. “You know how Mahaicony murky water is. But his clothes were still clean. There was no sign that it was soaked in that kind of water. Mahaicony water would have gotten it dingy.”
Secondly, she saw that the blood which emanated from his ear was dried on to his face. “Clearly, if you hit your head and you go into the water, it bleeds out into the water. It had to have had some sort of time to dry somewhere to form that layer over his face. So that’s the first alarming thing. I saw this personally.”
Mishka does not believe that the authorities did enough even from the point of view of an accident. “Let’s assume one hundred percent it was an accident. How deep was the water? Where are his skid marks? Anything to show legitimately that there was an accident. There was no investigation even into an accident. And that too is disturbing. He was a very prominent figure. Why just leave it like that?”
Mr. Puran’s vehicle was reportedly taken to the Mahaicony Police Station but no one was told when the vehicle was being released. “At least I wasn’t told, and I would have thought that being in the profession, I would have been afforded that courtesy of knowing when that vehicle was being released so that I could have done things to preserve the vehicle which was the only evidence left,” Mishka recalled.
To this day, she feels that her father’s murderer had to be someone he knew. “He would never have stopped his vehicle. I think in my mind, that he would have stopped and this was what happened to him. The windows were up, no AC was on, his lights were not on at the time, (who drives at night with their lights off?) And when I peeped into the vehicle, it was in park.”

Asphyxiation
Mr. Puran’s death certificate says that he died of asphyxiation but it does not state asphyxiation by drowning. “It simply says asphyxiation which can cover many things including being strangled, etc…it’s very, very wide.”

Also, there were marks on his skin which could not be explained, Mishka said. “At the funeral, I was wondering why he was wearing gloves. I had never seen gloves on a dead body. So I was wondering if it was for style. Then I figured it out. His veins were as big as pencils which could only happen before you die. It can’t pool up in your veins after you die. So whatever caused your veins to get big would have happened while you were alive because your body is preserved in a state as it is when you die. So it would lend credence to the fact that somehow he was restrained.
“He could have very well died of drowning. But maybe, well not maybe, I am convinced it was not in the way that they said that he drowned, just because of the physical evidence.
But for whatever reason, I don’t wish to speculate, but nothing was ever done and it would appear that nothing will ever be done. I am sure authorities will say there was nothing to show foul play. There are very good people in the police force but perhaps it is lack of training. Perhaps there isn’t a command from the top. I can only speculate as to why nothing was done. But it doesn’t mean that nothing can ever be done because it is an indictable offence. Twenty years can pass and they can bring it up.”
Mr. Puran was often said to be the lawyer who represented the high profile criminals. But even so, Mishka is contending that her father was just doing his job.
“It was his job. He was not in any way emotionally connected to these people or they were not his friends. It was simply his job and he was good at it. Whichever client he had should have been afforded the best representation they could get. We all want to be the best in our field. So whether or not you want to say its karma…well, only God can be the judge of that.”

He will never die
“I still grieve for him every single day. Every day I wake up, I feel like it’s the first time I am hearing the news. When I go to bed at night, I close my eyes and I think of him. And sometimes when I am praying, I still pray for him like I would have before and then I realized he is not there anymore. And my prayers can’t do anything for him. I think the same thing with my sister,” Mishka expressed.

The family always felt that Mr. Puran was untouchable. They never would have thought that someone out there would try to harm him.
“He wasn’t a person that would warrant that. He was very peaceful. He always sought to coexist with everyone else. He never hurt anybody. Perhaps he hurt us as his family, but I don’t think that he ever went out there deliberately hurting people.”
Mishka said her father left an indelible impression on her and her family and on anyone with whom he came into contact.
“He was one man. But he lives on through all of us. Each child has a certain attribute. He will never die in our hearts and in those that he touched because whether you liked him or not, he was a remarkable person. He just had the charisma and the charm to pull you in and anyone that met him will remember him to the day they die.”
Written By Telesha Ramnarine