Every football match ends with a scoreline. Life rarely does. We remember the trophy, the missed penalty, the winning goal, but the conversations that never happened, the sacrifices made quietly at home, and the fears carried long after the stadium empties never find their way onto the scoreboard. That is the territory Devendra Garware chooses to explore in Shadows & Goals. Football gives the story its rhythm, but silence gives it its meaning. At its heart, this is not a no

Weight is one of the few things society feels entitled to discuss without invitation. At family gatherings, in office corridors, at weddings, even in casual conversations between acquaintances, someone's body often becomes public property. Advice arrives freely, concern disguises judgment, and humour sometimes carries a sting that lingers far longer than anyone intends. What begins as a conversation about kilograms quietly becomes a conversation about worth. That is the emo

There’s a particular sound that echoes through Indian homes—a sharp intake of breath followed by a whispered, scandalised question: Aiyyo… what will the neighbours say? It’s not just a sentence. It’s a mood. A warning. Sometimes even a full-blown philosophy of life. I smiled the moment I opened Aruna Nambiar’s Aiyyo, What Will the Neighbours Say? because I knew, instinctively, that this book understood that sound better than most people ever will. Reading these thirteen sto

There are some books that don’t just tell a story — they unspool a silence you’ve been carrying within yourself. The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay is one of them. I remember reading it late one evening, the rain tapping against my window like a nervous confession. By the time I closed the book, I wasn’t sure whether it was the rain outside or the one that had started within me. Madhuri Vijay, in her debut, doesn’t announce herself with fireworks. She arrives like mist — quietl

You know that moment when you close a book and just…sit there, staring into nothing, because your mind hasn’t caught up with your heart?...