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

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

Some books don’t just sit on your bedside table — they sit inside your soul, quietly rearranging the pieces you thought were too broken to mend. Love, Hope and Magic by Ashish Bagrecha is one of those rare books that doesn’t shout wisdom; it whispers it. Like a soft rain after months of drought, it seeps into the cracks of your heart, making something bloom again where you thought nothing could grow.   I still remember the first time I stumbled upon Ashish’s words — a four-li

There are books that inform, and then there are books that transform. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath belongs firmly in the latter camp — the kind of book that makes you look up from the page, stare into space for a few seconds, and whisper to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”   I remember finishing the first chapter on a rainy Sunday morning, coffee in hand, and feeling oddly… awake. Not in the caffeine sense, but in the way your mind wakes up when it

Some stories feel like echoes of your grandparents’ voices — warm, worn by time, and yet carrying the pulse of youth. Rising from the Roots is one such tale. It’s not just a book; it’s a living bridge between generations, where dreams meet dirt, failure meets faith, and legacy is built not by luck, but by labour.   What caught my eye first wasn’t just the premise — three generations, three battles, one enduring spirit — but the author himself. Yuvraj Dangi, just 15, writes wi

It began with a chuckle. A friend had once told me, “Women don’t juggle—they perform a circus act with grace.” I didn’t quite get it until I read Lady, You’re Not a Man! by Apoorva Purohit. Somewhere between her witty anecdotes about lazy husbands, sulky interns, and those sacred office coffee breaks that save one’s sanity, I found myself nodding, smiling, and occasionally sighing at the mirror she held up — not just to women, but to the world that expects them to be superher