Some books don’t knock — they slip into your life like a whisper behind your ear. Relics was that kind of whisper for me, the kind that makes you turn around in a crowded café even though you know no one is there. I picked it up on an evening when the world felt a little too ordinary, a little too predictable, and within a few pages Tim Lebbon reminded me why I fell in love with fantasy and horror in the first place — because they crack open the mundane and let a little wild

I remember the first time I walked through Dharavi — not as a tourist, not as a spectator, but as a quiet observer trying to make sense of its heartbeat. The lanes were alive with motion — children darting between tin roofs, the hum of machines from leather workshops, the scent of wet earth mingling with chai and sweat. Amid that pulse, there was something else too — an invisible current of resilience, a kind of defiant grace.   Reading The Awakening of Dharavi by Atul Arjun

There are books that inform you, and then there are books that change how you see. Hide But Seek by Mishti Verma belongs to the latter — the kind that quietly rearranges your thoughts, leaving you both stirred and stilled.   I’ll admit, as a man, I began this book with curiosity — almost as an observer, wanting to understand what “the feminine voice” truly means in a world that often speaks over it. But within a few pages, curiosity turned to connection. Mishti’s words don’t

It begins with a gunshot — not one fired in the pages, but the echo of a life lived on the edge of it. As I turned the first few pages of The Enforcer, I felt as though I had stepped into the heart of India’s most volatile battleground — Uttar Pradesh — where the line between justice and survival often blurs, and one man in uniform dares to walk that trembling line every single day.   Written by Anirudhya Mitra — the investigative journalist who once broke the biggest stories

It’s strange, isn’t it — how love sneaks up on you in the smallest of moments? A random smile from a stranger, a dog wagging its tail, a message from an old friend. That’s how this book found me too — quietly, unexpectedly, but all at once. Love, Multiplied (111 Times) didn’t shout for attention. It whispered. And somehow, that whisper was louder than all the noise around me.   Curated by Megha Bajaj — an author, TEDx speaker, educator, and someone who seems to have mastered

Some books hand you rosy dreams of overnight success. The Hard Thing About Hard Things does the opposite — it kicks down the door, stares you straight in the face, and says, “You want to build something real? Good. Now let’s see if you can survive it.”   The first time I picked it up, I expected another glossy Silicon Valley playbook — filled with startup jargon, VC buzzwords, and motivational fluff. What I found instead was something raw, unfiltered, and, strangely, human. B

There’s something about opening a John Grisham novel that feels like walking into a familiar courtroom — the scent of old wood, the hum of ceiling fans, the quiet rustle before the verdict. You know it’ll be good, but you don’t know how it’ll surprise you this time. And with The Widow, Grisham doesn’t just surprise — he reinvents himself. After three decades of giving us legal thrillers that crackle with moral complexity, he ventures into a whodunit, and it’s as if the master

It starts like a film with the sound turned low — a ceiling fan humming, rain smudging a window, someone breathing too carefully in the dark. That’s how Solitude opens — not with a scream, but with the kind of silence that makes your skin remember things you’ve tried to forget.   I didn’t pick this book to be scared. I picked it because the title felt eerily familiar. Solitude. That tender, terrifying word. The one that sometimes heals, sometimes destroys. And Shubham Jain, i

There are books that teach. Books that preach. And then there are books that awaken. Dr. Smruti Ranjan Nayak’s Battlefield to Boardroom belongs to that rare third category — the kind that doesn’t merely speak to your intellect but reaches deep into your conscience and whispers, “Lead, but with purpose.”   I remember pausing midway through the first chapter — somewhere between Krishna’s calm counsel on the battlefield and a CEO’s boardroom dilemma — and realizing how eerily si

There are books that whisper. Books that reason. And then there are books that roar. Giorgia Meloni’s I Am Giorgia: My Roots, My Principles belongs to the last kind — the kind that slaps you awake before you’ve finished your espresso. Reading it felt like sitting across a table from a woman who doesn’t just speak — she commands the air around her. Whether you agree with her politics or not, it’s impossible to look away.   Meloni, Italy’s first female Prime Minister, has been

There’s something oddly satisfying about watching chaos simmer — in a test tube or a kitchen. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus captures that messy alchemy of life, science, and womanhood with a spark that refuses to be contained. It’s the kind of book that arrives wearing a lab coat but hides a rebellious smile underneath — equal parts thought experiment and emotional explosion.   Bonnie Garmus, a debut author who was in her sixties when this novel made its grand entranc

There’s something profoundly beautiful about inherited wisdom — the kind that isn’t written in textbooks but whispered over steaming cups of chai in courtyards fragrant with history. The Marwari Mindset: 10 Proverbs. 10 Stories. 100 Years of Business Wisdom by Chetan Murarka feels like sitting beside an elder who doesn’t just tell you how to do business, but how to live with dignity, discipline, and depth. It’s a rare kind of book — one that doesn’t chase you with flashy succ

There’s something quietly humbling about watching the first light kiss a mountain peak. That tender moment when gold spills over white, and the world holds its breath — it’s not just sunrise; it’s surrender. Reading Climbing a Mountain: Short Stories Inspired by Trekking by Ranjit Kulkarni felt like standing in that fragile dawn — awed, aware, and suddenly small in the best possible way.   I have not climbed any mountain — not in the literal sense. But yes, I have climbed man

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

I remember the first time I caught myself arguing with my own brain — a split-second tug of war between “I know this can’t be true” and “But it feels true.” It happened at a café when I instinctively chose the bolder-looking dessert label, assuming it was the better one. Later that night, with Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow open on my lap, I realized — I had just lived one of his lessons. That tiny, impulsive decision was my System 1 — fast, automatic, intuitive —

I remember the first time I curled up beside my grandmother on a chilly winter evening, the aroma of simmering kahwa filling the room, as she spun tales that danced between the real and the magical. There was always a hush in the air, punctuated by the crackle of the fireplace and the occasional shiver of delight or fear. Opening Dadi, Dantkatha and the Djinns by Avanti Sopory felt like stepping back into that very moment, a portal into a world where the snow-dusted valleys o

I remember the exact moment I discovered The God of Small Things—the air sticky with monsoon humidity, the smell of old paper, the faint clatter of a train in the distance—and how the world Roy created felt impossibly alive in my hands. Until then, the Booker Prize was just a shiny emblem, a distant flag waving over literature’s vast plains. But Roy made it pulse with heartbeat, heartbreak, and mischief. Picking up Mother Mary Comes to Me decades later, I felt that same elect

Some books don’t just tell stories — they rebuild faith. India Inc’s Greatest Turnarounds by Dev and Pragya Chatterjee is one such book. It doesn’t arrive with the swagger of a bestseller or the flash of a management manual. It walks in quietly, like a leader who has weathered a storm, sits across your table, and says — “Let me tell you what survival really means.”   The Chatterjees, both seasoned chroniclers of business and human ambition, bring to life something we rarely s

There are books that entertain you, and then there are books that quietly sit beside you — like an old friend, gently reminding you who you really are. Bonds by Tirtho Banerjee belongs to the latter. It doesn’t shout for attention. It lingers. It breathes. It listens. And somewhere between its ten short stories, it holds up a mirror — not to the extraordinary, but to the heartbreakingly ordinary moments that make us human.   I first picked up Bonds expecting to read about peo

There’s something about prisons that unsettles me — not the concrete, the locks, or the barbed wire, but the silence. That heavy, echoing silence that follows you like a shadow, whispering stories you’re not supposed to hear. When I picked up Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury, I thought I was signing up for a cold, procedural memoir — a peek behind the bars of India’s most infamous jail. Instead, I found a mirror — cracked, smok