Diwali means love, light, family…and gifts! As the season of celebration grows closer, you might be looking for the perfect gift for your loved ones – and there’s nothing better than a good book. So, here is our Diwali Reads selection! 1. Hindu Fables from the Vedas to Vivekananda Religions have always told stories to...

Why is the Koh-I-Noor one of the most valuable jewels on the planet? Were the British the first to take it out of India? Think it’s just a simple diamond? Think again! 1. The Koh-I-Noor was almost left by a river! When Humayun was toppled from his throne and he travelled to the Persian court to seek refuge, he almost...

As Ponniyin Selvan: I releases this week, we look at the other works of it’s writer – B. Jeyamohan! He Who Will Not Bow My name is Vanangaan – ‘He Who Will Not Bow’. Yes, that’s indeed my name. If you’d like my name in full, it’s K. Vanangaan Nadar. No, it really isn’t the name of my family deity,...

One of the best sources of book recommendations are editors and publishers – they read for a living and often come across books common readers would never come by organically. So, to bring you a fun varied selection, our founder, Chiki Sarkar gives you a glimpse of her reading list! I read widely and love dipping into...

We grow up with epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. With annual festivals, these stories are never too far. But do we process them the right way? Do they inform our morality and behaviour as they should? Are we looking deep enough? Renuka Narayanan, editor of Religion and culture at Hindustan Times , explores how we...

South India and North India are farther apart than we realise. Whether it’s education or quality of life, as the disparity grows, so does the chasm between us. This could be the next great Indian crisis. Nilakantan RS argues why –  South India: A Different Country Consider a child born in India. This child is, firstly,...

One of our novels, The Paradise of Food has been announced as a part of 2022-23 JCB Literary Prize’s Longlist! It tells the story of a middle-class Muslim joint family over a span of fifty years. As India – and Islamic culture – hardens, the narrator, whose life we follow from boyhood to old age, struggles to...

What does it mean to be Indian? Is it the same feeling people had in 1947? Veena Venugopal’s Independence Day explores the common man’s first Independence Day. For some it meant freedom, for some it meant fear. An excerpt explore the communal riots just before Independence faced by Tarun Kumar Roy – By 1946, we were full...

Shivaji has become a Hindutva icon in recent times due to his battles with Aurangzeb. But deeper analysis of how he ran his own state tells us a different story. In his latest book, ‘Shivaji’, Vaibhav Purandare explores –  So what kind of state was Shivaji trying to establish? Was it a secular state, as some have...

Renuka Narayanan was the editor for religion, arts and culture for Indian Express. She has used her deep knowledge of Indian epics to study how they help modern men and women. In her latest book, Learning From Loss, she explains how grief and how we deal with it hasn’t changed since ancient times – in fact, there is...