I opened A Rose on the Last Page on a night that felt ordinary. No grand intention. No search for meaning. Just a gap between two heavier reads. I told myself it would be a few poems before sleep. Something light. Something quick.   But sometimes the book you choose absentmindedly is the one that sits beside you longer than expected.   A Rose on the Last Page by Bharti Jain is not a dramatic collection. It doesn’t shout about heartbreak or decorate longing with complicated me

I remember closing this book one evening and realising the room around me felt louder than before. The fan hummed. A dog barked somewhere far away. And yet, after Desiccated Land, silence carried weight. This is not the silence of peace. It is the kind that lingers after you’ve heard too much truth at once and don’t know where to place it.   David Lepeska comes to Kashmir not as a saviour, not as an expert parachuted in with opinions ready-made, but as a young American journa

The first thing Brahma-Patra made me do was slow down. Not metaphorically. Physically. I remember reading the opening pages late at night, phone dimmed, the room quiet except for a ceiling fan slicing the air, when I realised my thumb had stopped its impatient scroll. This wasn’t a book that wanted to be consumed. It wanted to be sat with. Like a letter you don’t open in one go, because you know once you do, something inside you will shift.   Shiv Shankar Jha is not a loud wr