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

Book cover of Birthday Stories  edited by Haruki Murakami featuring minimalist design and birthday-themed imagery. There is something quietly unsettling about birthdays once you cross a certain age. The cake is still sweet, the candles still flicker, but beneath the ritual there is an inventory being taken. What did I become this year? What slipped away unnoticed?   That is the emotional temperature of Birthday Stories, curated by Haruki Murakami — not festive, not nostalgic

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

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

Some books arrive in your life like a loud motivational speaker with a mic that’s a notch too high. Others slip in quietly, pull out a chair, order cutting chai, and say, “Listen, try this one small thing today.” One Habit a Day belongs firmly to the second category.   I remember reading it late one evening, phone on silent, the house finally exhaling after a long day. No dramatic before-and-after promises. No “change your life by tomorrow” bravado. Just a steady, calm voice

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

Some books don’t begin when you open them. They begin much earlier—in the life you are already living.   Small Actions, Big Results: 31 Habits for a Supercharged Life began for me somewhere between an early-morning routine I try hard not to skip, a basketball court that still teaches me discipline at forty-plus, a reading habit that once turned into a world record, and the quiet inheritance of values my father left behind—without ever calling them habits.   I rarely pick up s

Some books don’t begin when you open them.   They begin much earlier— in the quiet fears you carry about love, in the endings you never got to choose, in the stories you were forced to leave unfinished.   The Things We Leave Unfinished met me exactly there.   I picked this book up with assumptions. I’ll admit that upfront. I thought I was walking into a glossy, trope-heavy romance—something indulgent, dramatic, maybe even forgettable. Instead, Rebecca Yarros quietly dismantle