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

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

We have all been there. We know Ramayana. We know Mahabharata. We have heard the Gayatri Mantra. We have grown up hearing words like Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Smritis and Shastras. We visit temples, celebrate festivals, perform rituals and sometimes confidently discuss "our culture". Then someone asks a very simple question: "But where does all this come from?" And suddenly, the confidence disappears. We know the stories. We know the practices. We know the names. Bu

Imagine having the life that people spend years chasing. Two master’s degrees. A successful corporate career. A big house. A long marriage. Two children. Two dogs. Two cars. A beautiful yard. Parties. Comfort. Stability. From the outside, there is very little to complain about. Now imagine walking away from it. That is where Leena Palav’s UnMoored begins to become interesting. Because this is not really a story about leaving a job or travelling around the world. It is a

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

There are people who look lonely. And then there are people who have become so good at living alone that nobody thinks to ask if they are lonely. Meera is one of them. At fifty, she has a job. A routine. A home. A life that, from the outside, seems perfectly manageable. She wakes up. Goes to work. Comes back. Follows her routines. Nothing is falling apart. Except perhaps Meera herself. That is where Sindhura Chamala’s Parts of Living quietly gets under your skin

Sometimes the hardest goodbye is not the one we say to another person. It is the goodbye we keep postponing inside ourselves. That is where I Cannot Say Goodbye to You finds its emotional strength. At first glance, the title can make you expect a familiar romance—love, separation, heartbreak, and the difficult business of moving on. But Rithvik Singh’s first romance novel reaches somewhere more uncomfortable. It asks what happens when a person grows up believing that the

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