There’s a particular kind of silence that follows a question you cannot answer — not because you lack intelligence, but because the pieces simply refuse to sit still. That is the silence I carried while reading Salt and Blood by Amit D'Souza. Not a loud, heart-racing thriller silence. A slower one. The kind that lingers like humidity before a storm that may or may not arrive.   At first glance, this is the story of Inspector Sheela Sawant investigating a body found under unse

There is a particular kind of love that does not begin with conversation. It begins with watching.   While reading Heart Overruled – A Bengali-Tamil Romance by Debanjana Mukherjee, I kept returning to the image of a sixteen-year-old girl at her sister’s wedding, standing amidst marigold garlands and ritual chants, quietly memorising the face of a man who barely registers her presence. That first encounter is brief, almost fragile. For Parineeta, it is seismic. For Aravind, it

Some people are afraid of heights. Some are afraid of failure. And some are afraid of the one moment where everything is supposed to look perfect.   The Landing begins in the cockpit, but it quickly makes it clear that the real descent is internal.   First Officer Anvi Singh is the kind of woman our culture celebrates without hesitation — disciplined, decorated, precise. A rising star trusted with lives thousands of feet above ground. She is trained for chaos. She knows her c

I keep thinking about how casually we take photographs now. A thumb tap. A half-smile. A moment frozen without intention. Kachri Kamble: Selfie That Rewrote Politics made me uneasy about that casualness. It reminded me that in the age of spectacle, innocence doesn’t need to be loud to be punished—it only needs to be visible.   I read this book slowly, not because the narrative drags, but because it presses against something tender. Sandeep Sinha begins with an act so ordinary

Pune is the second city I’ve loved deeply, after Mumbai. I’ve been there countless times—often enough to know the older parts by instinct, to recognise the quiet charm of its lanes, and to slowly understand the language of its newer, faster edges too. If life ever asked me to move away from Mumbai, Pune would be the only city I’d agree to without a long internal argument. It has that rare quality of familiarity without ownership, closeness without pressure. Reading Pune Junct

There’s a particular sound that echoes through Indian homes—a sharp intake of breath followed by a whispered, scandalised question: Aiyyo… what will the neighbours say? It’s not just a sentence. It’s a mood. A warning. Sometimes even a full-blown philosophy of life. I smiled the moment I opened Aruna Nambiar’s Aiyyo, What Will the Neighbours Say? because I knew, instinctively, that this book understood that sound better than most people ever will.   Reading these thirteen sto

Some books announce themselves loudly. They clear their throat, adjust their spectacles, and declare, “I have something important to say.” The Daughters of Shantiniketan doesn’t do that. It sits beside you quietly, like someone at a café who doesn’t interrupt your thoughts—until, suddenly, you realise they know exactly what you’ve been thinking all along.   I began this novel expecting a family saga steeped in Bengali tradition and Tagore’s legacy. I did not expect it to feel