Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of Whispers in the Mist by Prerna Dewan

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 Darjeeling—painted so vividly that I could almost taste the cold in the air—I felt my pulse slow, my breathing soften, and a strange, powerful quiet settle over me. It wasn’t drama. It wasn’t shock. It was the kind of profound silence that arrives only when a story presses its palm gently against your heart and says, Listen. This matters.

Prerna Dewan, a name I vaguely knew from literary circles, surprised me completely with the complexity of her craft. A writer who understands silence as deeply as sound, she paints Darjeeling not as the postcard hill station people fantasize about, but as a living, breathing being—aching, grieving, resilient. There is something intimate about the way she writes, as if she grew up knowing the heartbeat of every lane, every wooden cottage, every shivering pine tree lost inside the eternal mist.

At the heart of the book is Gayatri, a spirit caught between grief and love, wandering a small Himalayan hamlet as life continues below her—a life that has both forgotten her and yet been shaped by her absence. The brilliance lies not in portraying her as a ghost, but in portraying her as memory—soft, aching, persistent. Through her unseen gaze, we meet ten characters living against the backdrop of Darjeeling in the 1990s, a time scarred by the aftermath of the Gorkhaland Andolan, when hope and despair lived in the same breath. These interconnected stories form a tapestry woven with folklore, superstition, cultural rituals, poverty, fractured families, and the haunting weight of societal judgment.

Dewan’s writing is deceptively gentle. Her sentences glide like mist over a quiet hillside, and yet within them sit the sharp edges of loss and longing. She plays with perspective—the living and the dead, human and animal, anger and tenderness. One moment you’re watching a grieving couple who cannot speak their pain aloud; the next, you inhabit the mind of Baini, a stray cat, whose observant innocence holds more wisdom than any human character is willing to admit. And then there is the story of Raney, whose simplicity and pain left me with a lump in my throat I could neither swallow nor ignore. I found myself pausing, staring at nothing, wondering why society is often most cruel to the harmless.

But the story that wrecked me—absolutely shattered me—was The New Bride. I was not prepared for the emotional earthquake it delivered. It is a story that holds you by the collar and does not release, forcing you to witness maternal desperation, betrayal born from fear, community silence, and the excruciating loneliness of a woman no one chose to understand. It is rare to read something that feels like a physical ache. In Nepali, as readers have described, there is the word Hirikkai—a soul-crushing pain that leaves an aftertaste long after healing. This story embodies that word perfectly, and I do not think I will recover from it soon.

Structurally, the book is masterful. Each chapter can stand alone, yet together they form a circle—stories bleeding into each other, echoing themes of redemption, fate, inherited grief, and the unseen threads that bind strangers. This is not a fast-paced read, and it shouldn’t be. It demands to be savored, not rushed. I read slowly, almost reverently, afraid to reach the last page because I did not want to leave the mist-covered hills where every silence felt like a heartbeat.

If I had to offer a gentle critique, perhaps one or two transitions between stories could feel abrupt for readers craving linearity, but I suspect that is the point—life is rarely linear, and grief never is.

When I finished the book, I closed it and simply sat in the quiet. No music. No noise. Just breath. I thought about how many lives we unknowingly touch, how love endures beyond flesh, how unresolved stories linger like ghosts in the room. In a world obsessed with speed and surfaces, this book reminds us to feel, to listen, and to remember.

Whispers in the Mist is not just read. It is experienced. It is inhaled like the cold mountain air that burns your lungs and clears your mind. If you love books that blend folklore and humanity, spirituality and realism, grief and beauty—this one is waiting for you.

Pick it up. Walk into the mist. Let it change you.

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