There’s something quietly unsettling about a tree that watches you. Not in a mythical, larger-than-life way — but in the way an old house watches its inhabitants age, fracture, betray, and forgive. That was the feeling I carried through The Parijat Tree and Other Stories by Sameer Nagarajan — the sense that these stories are not merely told, they are observed. Closely. Patiently. Almost clinically at times.   This collection moves across decades of Indian life — from the 70s

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

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 don’t take you back to school. They take you back to a feeling. A tightness in the chest. A silence you learned to live with. IX B: The Fragile Heart of an Achiever did that to me—not by reminding me of my own classroom, but by pulling me into a memory I hadn’t connected to school life until now.   I grew up in a co-ed environment. Boys, girls, shared benches, shared laughter, shared awkwardness. So, when people talk about the “only boys’ school experience,” I usua

There are some characters we inherit, not choose.   Their meanings are handed to us early, wrapped in certainty, repeated until curiosity feels unnecessary. Ravan arrived in my life that way — already concluded, already named, already sealed. Evil was not something to be examined; it was something to be defeated. The story had taught me where to stand long before I knew how to ask why.   So when I picked up this book, I didn’t do so with reverence or rebellion. I came carryin

There are books you read with a cup of tea in hand, letting the warmth seep into your palms while the pages gently turn. And then there are books that snatch the cup right out of your grasp, sending it crashing to the floor because—what just happened? The Mussoorie Murders by Divyaroop Bhatnagar did exactly that to me. I opened it expecting a quiet weekend read. Instead, I found myself wide awake past midnight, staring at the ceiling, replaying clues like a detective who refu