There are books you read, and there are books that read you. I didn’t expect that a quiet-looking hardcover with a nostalgic photograph of Mussoorie nestled on the cover would do that to me—but the moment I cracked open Mussoorie Montage: Tales from the Hills by Divyaroop Bhatnagar, I felt something shift. It was like stepping into a fog-thick morning on Camel’s Back Road where everything feels familiar yet charged with the thrill of what might be waiting around the next bend

They say that if you grow up in Maharashtra, Shivaji Maharaj isn’t just a historical figure — he’s a presence. A pulse. A silhouette carved into your imagination long before you even learn to spell “history.” And over the years, we’ve all read countless books about him: some glorifying him into near-myth, some dissecting his tactics with academic precision, some reducing him to a chapter squeezed between the Mughals and the British. Yet, strangely, very few of those books eve

What does it mean to race against time—not metaphorically, not poetically, but in the brutal, breath-snatching, pulse-in-your-throat way where every second could save a life or end one? I asked myself that question somewhere around 2 a.m., sitting alone with a cup of ginger tea gone cold, unable to put Jeffrey Archer’s End Game down. It’s funny how books sometimes choose their own reading conditions: silence outside, a faint hum of the ceiling fan, and a story that refuses to

There are some books you don’t read — they read you. They peel you open like an orange, sting the soft inner parts you thought you’d hidden well, and leave you sitting in silence long after the final page has closed. The Bell Jar is that kind of book. I picked it up on a tired Tuesday night, expecting a literary classic with polite gloom, maybe a sprinkle of poetic sadness. Instead, it dragged me by the collar straight into the suffocating hush of a mind unravelling — and I’m

Some stories don’t knock politely before entering your life. They walk straight in, sit across from you like an old friend, and before you know it, they’ve moved something inside you that you didn’t even realize needed shifting. Whispers in the Mist: Tales from a Himalayan Hamlet by Prerna Dewan was one such unexpected visitor. I began reading it on an ordinary evening, thinking I’d finish a chapter or two before bed. But the moment I stepped onto those mist-draped hills of D

The funny thing about constitutions is that most of us don’t think about them until something shakes us. A protest on the street. A headline that burns our eyes. A conversation that leaves us unsettled long after the tea has gone cold. For me, it happened on a quiet Sunday morning, sunlight spilling across my table, newspapers spread out like a battlefield of opinions—and suddenly, I felt the weight of a question I had never asked myself seriously: Do I truly understand the C

I didn’t mean to start this book on a weekday night. I really didn’t. I had promised myself an early sleep, a calm mind, maybe even some music. But books have a strange way of choosing their own timing, don’t they? Escape from Kabul by Dr. Enakshi Sengupta didn’t knock politely — it slipped into my hands like a pulse waiting to be heard. And somewhere between opening the first page and taking the first sip of my green tea, the world around me went quiet. By page three, the te

There are days that taste like heartbreak — metallic and cold — and there are days that smell of rain-soaked second chances. The Do-Over by Lynn Painter lives somewhere between the two, looping endlessly in that bittersweet space where pain and hope take turns holding your heart.   I still remember my first Lynn Painter read — Better Than the Movies — a warm, quirky rom-com that made me believe in the healing power of laughter. Painter has that uncanny gift: she writes teen s