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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Jenny Kleeman

‘I had her right in front of me. And now she’s gone’: how one mother lost her daughter to mental illness

Naina Mishra and her mother, Vandana Luthra, on a boat in Norway in 2018
Naina Mishra and her mother, Vandana Luthra, in Norway in 2018. Photograph: courtesy of Vandana Luthra Photograph: courtesy of Vandana Luthra

Naina Mishra seemed to turn up at the yoga studio in Euston, north-west London, out of nowhere. She wasn’t referred by anyone; she didn’t come with a friend. A 21-year-old woman of Indian heritage with an American accent who grew up in Hong Kong and had recently arrived in London, Naina just “fell in” off the street in January 2022, say her yoga teachers, Hamish Hendry and Louise Newton. But it became part of her daily life. Every morning, she returned to practise there.

Chatting after class, they learned that Naina had just graduated from university in the US and had been interning at the investment bank Goldman Sachs and the consulting firm McKinsey. She was studying in London before beginning a high-flying job as a business analyst at McKinsey in New York in the autumn. “She was really focused,” Newton remembers. “She would say, ‘My goals are to be a CEO, to have three children, to be married.’ She was really clear on what the future was going to hold for her.” By May 2022, she had left London to embark on her next chapter.

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