There are conversations we avoid because we don't know what to say. And then there are conversations we avoid because we know exactly what we want to say. The second kind is often harder. We rehearse the words in our heads. We imagine how the other person might react. We worry about sounding rude, confrontational, insensitive, or simply being misunderstood. So we wait. Tomorrow becomes next week. Next week becomes never. And sometimes silence costs us more than an

I have always found something slightly unsettling about telephone calls. Maybe it is because you cannot see the person on the other end. You hear a voice, but you don't know what the face behind it looks like. You cannot tell whether someone is speaking calmly because they are genuinely calm, or because they are trying very hard not to fall apart. Sometimes there is a pause. Sometimes there is silence. And sometimes, you realise that the person on the other end may

I have a confession. I like books that make me stop reading. Not because they are boring. Quite the opposite. Because sometimes I am reading a page and suddenly I have to look up and say, “Wait. What?” That happened quite a few times with What the What?! And, honestly, that is probably the best possible reaction to this book. I came to it expecting a book of strange facts, trivia and questions. I got that. But somewhere between one bizarre fact and another

There are some questions that are asked because we don't know the answer. And then there are questions we ask because we are afraid of what the answer might mean. Am I a Dalit? belongs to the second category. Vijhay Sundar K.G.'s novel begins in a world where caste is not an abstract idea discussed in textbooks. It is present in families, relationships, social behaviour, humiliation and the choices people are allowed to make. But what makes the novel interesting is that

There is a strange problem with legends. We meet them too late. By the time we hear their names, the transformation has already happened. The doubts have disappeared. The mistakes have been edited out. The person has become a symbol. Parashurama is one of those figures. We know the axe.We know the anger.We know the warrior. But who was Rama before he became Parashurama? That is where Kevin Missal's Parashurama: The Axe of Rudra caught my attention. The book begi

There is something deeply comforting about certainty. We like knowing why things happen. We like clear answers, predictable outcomes and explanations that neatly close the conversation. We live in a time that makes this even easier. Algorithms predict what we might want next. Search engines find answers in seconds. Experts speak with enormous confidence. Even social media has turned complicated questions into simple opinions. And then comes a book with the rather mischiev

Some love stories end. Some simply learn to exist differently. That is what stayed with me after reading Ashritta Saran’s Parallel Heartbeats. Ash and Aaryan find each other when they are young enough to believe that loving someone deeply should be enough. But growing up has a way of complicating even the purest emotions. Ambition enters. Distance enters. Circumstances enter. And eventually, two people who once felt like each other’s entire world have to discover who they

We know how the story ends. That is perhaps the biggest problem with reading about someone like Lionel Messi. We already know the boy from Rosario becomes one of the greatest footballers the world has ever seen. We know about Barcelona. We know the goals, the trophies, the records. We know the heartbreak with Argentina. We know the World Cup finally arrives. We know Paris, and then Miami. We know the images. We know the ending. And when we know the ending, we tend to

We often imagine that the most dangerous secrets in a relationship are the ones someone tells us. Perhaps they aren't. Perhaps the more dangerous ones are the secrets someone successfully keeps from us. That thought stayed with me while reading Anubha Gupta's The Almost Perfect Wife. Because beneath the murder mystery, the twists and the ancestral house in Mashobra, this is really a story about something much more uncomfortable: how little we may actually know about the

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