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 quietly cinematic about reading a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel. You don’t just read her stories — you inhabit them. Her worlds hum with nostalgia, ambition, heartbreak, and hope, all lit by the glow of complex women who refuse to fit neatly into anyone’s expectations. And in Atmosphere , Reid takes her storytelling somewhere it’s never been before — into orbit. She’s done Hollywood ( The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo ), music ( Daisy Jones & The Six ), and s
There are some books you don’t just read — you inhabit them. They unfold like an old photograph album, where every page carries a scent, a story, a heartbeat. I Came Upon a Lighthouse by Shantanu Naidu, with illustrations by Sanjana Desai, is one such book. It’s not a biography, not exactly a memoir, but a feeling — warm, humane, and quietly luminous — much like the man at its center: Ratan Tata. I still remember the first time I turned its pages on a quiet Sunday morning,
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
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
It begins, as most real things do, not with fireworks but with a question. “What if marriage isn’t about finding the right person, but about becoming one?” That thought hit me somewhere between a sip of chai and the first few pages of Bhupendra Jain’s Before the Seven Vows: Conversations Every Couple Should Have Before Marriage. It’s not your typical relationship self-help book that tosses you a checklist and bids you good luck. It’s more like a wise friend — grounded, patien
There’s a peculiar kind of madness that only Mumbai can offer — the kind that smells like rain on asphalt, sounds like a thousand horns arguing at once, and feels like hope stubbornly pushing through chaos. Vrushali Samant’s Madness in Mumbai: When Forty Gets Naughty bottles that madness, shakes it up with heartbreak, humour, and heat — and hands it to you with a wink. It’s fizzy, messy, and utterly intoxicating. Vrushali Samant, who’s known for her sharp wit and eye for em
