Somewhere between stretching my back before the day began and pausing longer than usual in front of the mirror, I realized I am standing at a strange, quiet threshold. Fifty is no longer an abstract number. It’s a door I can see now. So when I picked up 50 Things to Realize Before It’s Too Late by Manoj Chenthamarakshan, it didn’t feel like a casual read—it felt like an appointment with myself.   This is not a book you read with a highlighter hunting for genius lines. It’s mo

Some books announce themselves with a thesis. This one arrived like humidity on skin—quiet, unavoidable, already inside the room before I knew it. I was reading, but I was also standing on a riverbank at night, ash cooling, water moving, the world refusing to pause for grief. That opening feeling never really left me. Dhara doesn’t ask for attention. It assumes you will eventually slow down enough to listen.   Bal Krishna Thakur’s Dhara: A Journey of Grief, Continuity, and In

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

I didn’t read Shukriya Boganviliya in one sitting. Not because it was difficult—but because it kept asking me to stop. A poem would end, and instead of turning the page, I would sit there, feeling oddly addressed. As if someone had spoken my name softly and walked away.   Written by Nitya Shukla, Shukriya Boganviliya is a Hindi poetry collection that doesn’t ask for attention. It earns it quietly. Published by Highbrow Scribes Publications, this book carries an unassuming con