Words by Lanie Anderson
photography by Akash Mehta

For five years, Mishti Verma began every workday the same: a nutritional milkshake, sprouts, and boiled eggs for breakfast; Buddhist chanting followed by meditation; and five minutes for writing down on paper her goals for the day. In that order.

When Mishti started Inner Katha Interventions in 2008, the tiny window of her bedroom—a makeshift office with books that lined the walls—only allowed small beams of light into the room and gave tiny glimpses of the hills, trees, and colony landscape of Mumbai, India, where she lived.

Mishti had no view of its center—a city of over 20 million people—with its busy streets, blaring car horns, and aromatic traces of cumin and coriander.

But she needed no view of the city’s heart to catch the spirit of its people—one of determination to succeed.

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