We have grown up with certain identities so familiar that we rarely stop to examine them. Parvati is Shiva’s wife.She is Ganesha’s mother.She is the embodiment of Shakti.She is Durga. She is Kali. We know these names. We know the stories. But do we know Parvati? That question stayed with me while reading Parvati by Samar. Because the interesting thing about this novel is not that it tells us another story about a familiar deity. Its real attempt is more ambitious: i

Why do organisations find it so easy to add something—and so difficult to remove it? A new process is introduced. A new layer of approval appears. Another product enters the portfolio. Another report is added to the calendar. A system that nobody particularly likes continues to exist because “this is how we have always done it.” And slowly, almost invisibly, complexity becomes normal. That was the thought I kept returning to while reading The Simplicity Trap by Rohit Ch

What would you be willing to give up if you genuinely believed that the one thing you were searching for could not be found in the life you were already living? That question stayed with me while reading If Truth Be Told: A Monk’s Memoir by Om Swami. Because the extraordinary thing about this memoir is not simply that a successful businessman became a monk. It is that the person who had seemingly acquired everything the world teaches us to desire eventually discovered t

When a Border Separates Two People, What Exactly Does It Fail to Separate? Some love stories are about two people trying to find each other. Dear Zahira, With Love by Sachin NG is about something more difficult: two people trying to remain connected when history has decided they belong on opposite sides of a border. That distinction stayed with me. Because we often talk about Partition through numbers—millions displaced, families separated, lives destroyed, borders re

We have spent years asking whether artificial intelligence will destroy humanity. Akshay Chopra's After Us asks a more unsettling question: What if it doesn't? What if the intelligence we create is benevolent? What if it solves problems we couldn't? What if it understands us better than we understand ourselves? What if it doesn't need to hate humanity to make humanity irrelevant? That possibility stayed with me long after I finished the book. After Us begins with id

The Practicing Mind — Are We Practising Patience, or Practising Impatience? We often say that we want to become better at something. A better writer. A better athlete. A better parent. A better professional. A better version of ourselves. But there is a part of the process we don't talk about enough. The part where we are still bad at it. The part where improvement is so slow that we begin wondering whether we are improving at all. The part where we have to do the

A child’s first experience of courage is rarely dramatic. It is usually something much smaller: climbing a little higher, walking a little farther, trying something after being told not to, or facing a fear when there is no adult around to make the decision. That is the space Armaan Farid explores in The Brave Little Dinosaur Achoo. Achoo is bright, curious and mischievous. He loves running around, exploring and climbing trees, even when his mother repeatedly worries abou

Sometimes love doesn't just change two people. Sometimes it changes the world they are standing in. That is the intriguing idea at the centre of Sean Walker's UNEETARIA, the first book in The Uneetaria Saga. Jalen and Amara begin with a connection. But theirs is not the kind of connection that ends with two people simply falling in love. Their bond opens a door. And behind that door is Uneetaria. A world of beauty, mystery and danger. Suddenly, what began as a

There are crimes so brutal that they refuse to remain inside police files. They become part of a city's memory. Parents whisper about them to protect their children. Entire neighbourhoods measure time by what happened before and after. The Shadow of Evil belongs to that unsettling category of true crime—not because it glorifies violence, but because it forces us to confront what happens when violence becomes ordinary. At first glance, this appears to be the story of one man

Every generation believes its struggles are unique. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren't. Anxiety has a different name today. Overthinking has become a personality trait. Career pressure begins before adulthood. Social media has turned comparison into a daily habit. We carry entire conversations inside our heads long after they have ended. That is exactly where The Gita for Gen Z by Rania Sen begins. Not on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. But on the battlefield insid

There is something wonderfully human about looking up at the night sky and asking questions no one can answer with complete certainty. Where did all this come from? Are we really alone? Could time ever flow backwards? And if the universe had a beginning, will it one day have an end? Most of us have wondered about these questions at some point. Few of us ever find explanations that don't leave us even more confused. That is where Mysteries of the Universe by Peter

There is a strange comfort in detective fiction. A crime happens. Someone investigates. Truth emerges. Justice, more often than not, follows. The Menon Investigation reminded me that real life rarely offers that comfort. And perhaps that's exactly what Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari wanted me to realize. At first, I thought I was picking up another police procedural. An old murder. A senior police officer. A cold case waiting to be solved. The familiar ingredi

Some books arrive carrying more conversations than pages. Long before I knew what Fractured Communities was trying to say, I knew who had written it. That, perhaps, is the strange reality of our times. We often meet an author through headlines before we ever meet their ideas. Opinions are already formed. Sides are already chosen. It made me wonder how often we judge a book before opening it. Once I looked beyond the name on the cover, something else became clear. This w

Some books arrive with answers. Others arrive with a question that quietly follows you long after you've closed the final page. What if the greatest obstacle to your work isn't the world around you—but the distance between who you are and who you could become? That is the conversation Manoj Chenthamarakshan begins in Aligned Work: Let the Higher Self Express Through You! It is a remarkably slim book—barely twenty-eight pages—but its ambition is anything but small. Ins

Some evenings refuse to end when the sun goes down. They linger. In the silence after everyone has gone to bed. In an old photograph discovered by accident. In a familiar fragrance floating through an unfamiliar street. They arrive carrying memories we never invited—and perhaps never truly let go. That quiet emotional space is where Neelam Saxena Chandra's Seeli Shaamein begins. The title itself is evocative. Damp evenings. Moist with memory. Heavy with emotions that

Grief changes the way we look at the world. After losing someone we love, even the smallest things begin to feel different. A butterfly crossing our path. A feather lying on the pavement. A dream so vivid that we wake up convinced we were with them again. Most of us have experienced moments like these, even if we've never spoken about them. Beyond Goodbye by Tanishka Chugera grows from that very human space. The book begins with the sudden loss of the author's mother, b

Every long-running espionage series faces the same invisible enemy: familiarity. The missions become bigger. The explosions become louder. The body count rises. Yet the suspense quietly fades because readers begin believing the hero will always find a way out. A Hostile State, the fifth and final book in Adrian Magson's Lone Mercenary series, takes the opposite approach. Instead of making Marc Portman more powerful, Magson makes him more vulnerable. That single decisi

Most people hear the word strategy and immediately think of defeating someone else. Winning a battle. Outsmarting an opponent. Staying one step ahead of the competition. Miyamoto Musashi saw strategy differently. For him, victory began long before the sword was drawn. It began with discipline, clarity, patience, and an honest understanding of oneself. That is why The Book of Five Rings, written in 1645, still feels surprisingly relevant despite belonging to a world of sam

There is something deeply human about our fascination with parallel universes. We don't imagine them because we are obsessed with science or fantasy. We imagine them because every life leaves behind unanswered questions. What if we had accepted that job? What if we had stayed? What if we had walked away? Somewhere inside all of us lives a quiet curiosity about the roads we never took. Ssamridhi Gulati's The Shadow Weaver taps into that universal emotion and transforms it into

Every conversation about improving our lives usually begins in the wrong place. We talk about better habits, stronger discipline, improved productivity, or greater motivation. Rarely do we begin with the organ that makes every one of those things possible. The Brain Always Wins asks us to reverse that order. Before changing our behaviour, it argues, we should understand the brain that creates it. That premise gives the book its identity. John Sullivan and Chris Parker are