Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’
Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra, widely known in the world of satire by his pen name ‘Uratipt’, expresses his emotions and thoughts with profound honesty and depth. His multifaceted talent is evident in his contributions across various literary genres. He is not only a renowned satirist but also a poet and a children’s author.
His satirical writings have earned him a special place in the literary world. His satire, ‘Shikshak Ki Mout’, went massively viral on the Sahitya Aajtak channel, garnering over a million views and reads—a monumental achievement in the history of Hindi satire. His collection of satires, ‘Ek Tinka Ikyavan Aankhen’ (A Straw and Fifty-One Eyes), is also highly acclaimed and includes his timeless work, ‘Kitabon Ki Antim Yatra’ (The Last Journey of Books). Other celebrated collections include ‘Mayaan Ek, Talwar Anek’ (One Sheath, Many Swords), ‘Gapodi Adda’ (The Gossiper’s Den), and ‘Sab Rang Mein Mere Rang’ (My Colors in Every Hue). His satirical novel, ‘Idhar-Udhar Ke Beech Mein’ (In Between Here and There), is a unique and groundbreaking work focused on the third world.
His significant contributions to literature have been widely recognized. He was honored with the Best Young Creator Award, 2021 by the Telangana Hindi Academy and the Government of Telangana, an award presented by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. The Rajasthan Children’s Literature Academy also honored him for his children’s book, ‘Nanhon Ka Srijan Aasmaan’ (The Creative Sky of Little Ones). Additionally, he has received the Vyanga Yatra Ravindranath Tyagi Sopaan Samman and the Sahitya Srijan Samman from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Dr. Uratript has also played a pivotal role in writing, editing, and coordinating a total of 55 books for the Government of Telangana for primary school, college, and university levels. His work is included in university textbooks in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, where his satirical creations are part of the curriculum. This recognition underscores that young readers can identify and appreciate quality and impactful writing.
Key Accolades and Works
- Viral Satire: ‘Teacher’s Death’ (over 1 million views)
- Satire Collections: ‘Ek Tinka Ikyavan Aankhen’, ‘Mayaan Ek, Talwar Anek’, ‘Gapodi Adda’
- Unique Satirical Novel: ‘Idhar-Udar Ke Beech Mein’
- Awards: Shreshtha Navyuva Samman (Telangana), Sahitya Srijan Samman (PM Modi), and more.
- Educational Contribution: Authored and edited 55 books for the Telangana government.
Some precious moments of life
- Honoured with ‘Shrestha Navayuvva Rachnakar Samman’ by former Chief Minister of Telangana Government, Shri K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
- Honoured with Oscar, Grammy, Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Dadasaheb Phalke, Padma Bhushan and many other awards by the most revered Gulzar sahab (Sampurn Singh Kalra), the lighthouse of the world of literature and cinema, during the Sahitya Suman Samman held in Mumbai.
- Meeting the famous litterateur Shri Vinod Kumar Shukla Ji, honoured with Jnanpith Award.
- Got the privilege of meeting Mr. Perfectionist of Bollywood, actor Aamir Khan.
- Meeting the powerful actor Vicky Kaushal on the occasion of being honoured by Vishva Katha Rangmanch.
Today we present his satire Zero Balance.
☆ Witful Warmth# 121 ☆
☆ Satire ☆ Zero Balance… ☆ Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’ ☆
Upon every recurring Friday, precisely as the parish chime struck the hour of ten, there was wont to appear upon the icy cement steps fronting the principal office of the premier Nationalized Bank—a magnificent temple of commerce dedicated to the mysterious worship of Compound Interest and National Prosperity—one Mr. Parmanand, a venerable pilgrim of seventy-two winters. In his palsied fingers he bore, with as much religious solemnity as though it were the illuminated missal of a saint, an antique bank passbook of a sickly green hue, accompanied by a rubbed and battered two-rupee coin whose brassy surface had long since surrendered its lustre to the dirt of circulation.
Today being the twenty-eighth day of August—solemnly consecrated in the civic calendar as the National Anniversary of Universal Financial Inclusion—the sentinel at the portal, an imposing fellow in brass buttons whose musketry was kept in high polish, observed the patriarch posted upon the flags. Shifting his weapon with immense professional dignity, he was pleased to explode into bureaucratic merriment: “Hullo, grandfather! When the whole imperial realm is making merry over millions of miraculous ledgers and the celestial march of digital coin, what midsummer madness drives you to parade this tattered pamphlet before our governors, clutching an empty leaf to your bosom like a mendicant displaying a bogus sore?”
Whereupon old Parmanand, wiping the clouded lenses of his spectacles with the frayed hem of his cotton raiment, returned an answer of sweet and unruffled melancholy: “Alas, my son, this hollow register is no mere scrap of stationer’s refuse; it is the naked, unvarnished skeleton of your glittering financial labyrinth, which all the illuminated screens of your counting-houses can never quite contrive to hide.”
The assorted jobbers, usurers, and prosperous depositors who crowded the vestibule made it their Christian duty to laugh the graybeard to scorn, declaring that his intellect had evidently gone a-drifting down the river, that he should fancy a zero-balance ledger to be a title-deed of consequence wherewith to summon the High Board of Directors to judgment. Yet the old man, untroubled by their mocking tongues, did but stroke the yellowed parchment with shaking fingers, keeping his patient, unblinking vigil for the rumbling chariots of the high financial commissioners.
In process of time, the scribes and cash-counters of the establishment became so entirely habituated to this weekly apparition that they accounted him a harmless, obstinate nuisance, and brushed him from their reckonings with that exemplary dispatch for which all well-regulated public counting-houses are justly celebrated.
Whenever the Chief Cashier—a gentleman of immense girth and severe deportment, bearing an enormous cargo of crisp bank-notes toward the sanctuary of the Branch Governor—swept through the wickets, Mr. Parmanand would hoist himself upon his knotty crutch, bring his withered palms together, and sigh: “Honoured sir, hath his worship discovered any stray mite of government subsidy trickling into that zero-balance ledger of mine?”
At which the great accountant, rattling the brass grille of his cage in a paroxysm of official irritation, would snarl: “Bless my soul, old fellow! Until the High Treasury above deigns to discharge its electronic manna, and until the celestial server flashes its green illumination, an empty vault your book shall remain; and so you may go on perambulating this porch with your two-penny piece till the crack of doom!”
The venerable soul offered no retort; he merely crept back to his flagstone and fell to pressing the worn coin against the opening page—a futile experiment, for the little disc of metal invariably wobbled, slipped, and rolled back into the hollow of his lap. The parish gossips whispered that the dotard was doubtless pursuing some ancient debt or phantom discharge; but not a solitary clerk in the precinct possessed the imagination to suspect the dark and terrifying secret that bound that green booklet to the grand proclamations of the Universal Banking Jubilee.
High noon arrived, and with it, the sudden, majestic visitation of the Regional Director of the Ministry of Finance himself, attended by a cloud of heralds, arriving in immense state to inspect the Grand Credit Camp and review the progress of Financial Literacy.
At the screeching of the ministerial horns, the entire precinct was thrown into that delightful paroxysm of terror and obsequiousness which only high rank can inspire: sapphire streamers and festive bladders were hung across the granite pillars with frantic haste, lest the official eye should encounter an unadorned archway, and fresh carpeting was laid over the cracks in the pavement. The solemn lamps were ignited; a soaring homily was pronounced from the platform upon the imperial duty of sweeping every pauper into the golden tide of commerce; and when at length the Great Dignitary emerged, hemmed in by an obsequious herd of journalists with ready quills, his discerning eye was arrested by the figure of Parmanand, sitting motionless upon the stairs, the green passbook upon his knees.
Perceiving here an admirable occasion to exhibit that tender, paternal sympathy which reads so charmingly in the morning gazettes, the Director, attended by his scribes, bore down upon the old man with an air of sublime condescension: “Venerable father,” said he, with that honeyed benevolence which costs nothing and yields great harvest, “upon this historic day of economic emancipation we salute the impoverished and the aged. Disclose your grievance without fear, that the hand of Authority may strike off your afflictions. Hath the bounty of the State’s banking facilities failed to bless your threshold?”
Parmanand raised his dim, stony eyes to that august visage. With trembling hands, he extended the faded booklet straight towards the well-manicured palm of the Director: “Sir,” whispered he, with a quietude more terrible than thunder, “if Justice be indeed the merchandise of your high calling, open this record, and read the sentence inscribed in red ink upon its final leaves.”
The Director took the pamphlet into his hands, and as his eye fell upon the folios, his vision was blasted by a spectacle that made his countenance turn as pale as ashes. There, marshalled in grim and unrelenting ranks, stood the record of dozen upon dozen of pitiless exactions: fines for an insufficient balance, forfeits for the maintenance of the ledger, and penalties for the transmission of electronic dispatches—a long, black catalogue of extortion.
Two great, scalding tears broke from the old man’s rheumy eyes and splashed upon the battered two-rupee coin.
“Sir,” said Parmanand, his voice cracking like dry timber under the burden of grief, “twelve long years ago, when you went through the villages with pipes and tabors to enroll me in your zero-balance paradise, you swore that this house was the poor man’s sanctuary. Yet in these five winters past, every copper coin scraped together for my ailing wife’s medicine was secretly swallowed up by your ledger-keepers under the pretext of fines and charges; and when the well was drained dry, your menials thrust me into the gutter with a curse! My poor woman lies at this very hour upon her pallet, moaning in the agony of sickness, because the bread of her relief was devoured by your righteous machinery. I come today merely to cast this last, worthless piece of brass into your treasury—a parting tribute to show unto your great, usurious empire that the palace in which you banquet upon the name of Financial Inclusion was reared out of the very pockets you picked from the starving poor!”
The Director’s head drooped upon his breast, stricken with an overpowering shame; and through all the marbled vaults of that great counting-house there fell a silence so awful, so profound and penetrating, that the sleeping conscience of every money-changer present awoke, shuddered, and was afraid.
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© Dr. Suresh Kumar Mishra ‘Uratript’
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