yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Title:  Shaping and Denying Education: Role of Class, Caste, and Gender Author:  Aman Madan   Illustrator:  AbiraBandhyopadhyay Publisher:  Eklavya Foundation Price: 360/- Pages: 299 License:  Creative Commons   Development Support:  Tata Trusts Education : An uneven playing field Up at Teacher Plus , July 2026.  In his latest book, author Aman Madan talks about the impact of inequalities in our society ( gender, class, and caste ) on education, the dynamic nature of these inequalities, and how societal changes in the recent decades have impacted them. The book is spread across 14 chapters, each with its own set of references. The first two chapters lay the premise, the next five focus on caste and class, the three that follow talk about gender, and the final four about government policies and intersectionality. Towards the end is a list of further readings.   Caste and class. The author talks about caste and class in a manner that is un...

A season of longing and desire Title: The fragrance of rain  Publisher: Aleph Book Company First published: 2026 ISBN: 978-93-6523-030-7 Pages: 140 Price: 499/- Thanks to the team at Deccan Herald; the review on their website here . The Fragrance of Rain drenches you from page 1. The author enjoys being amidst the rains, and writing; and this book allows him to share these joys with us. His deep connect with Landour, its biodiversity, is apparent, “ Here in these delicate yet resilient landscapes, the rain means as much to those minuscule species as it does to us”. He also takes us to Goa and Kerela. He brings in references, walks in forested lands, and also engages with people to bring out, to highlight, monsoon’s role in our lives. This he does with an uncommon grace and flair in language. The length of the book, 140 pages, 10 chapters - 11 to 17 pages each, belies its scope and the depth it explores.  I have waited a long time for someone in love with rains to write on...

Thanks to the team at  Teacher Plus  for publishing this in the March 2026 issue.  Meeting the Savarnas by Ravikant Kisana resonated in a manner than not many books do. It reminded me of some of the conversations I had had, took me back to some situations I had been a part of, had me reread some sections, got me talking excitedly about the subject with friends, and make notes. This is a book school teachers will do good to read. It may help broaden their horizons, and in turn, benefit children in the long run. I will briefly talk about the book and follow it up with how it can help teachers. First, the book. Title: Meet the Savarnas: Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything Author: Ravikant Kisana Publisher: Penguin Random House India First Published: 2025 Pages: 187 Price: 699/- This is a book that questions the credibility of the elites by pointing out how deeply entrenched caste, and as a corollary, privilege are in our society. How we have looked at, and...

Title: The Social Life of Indian Trains - A Journey Author: Amitava Kumar  Publisher: Aleph Price: 399/- ISBN: 978-93-6523-896-9 Genre: Non-fiction First Published: 2025 Pages: 142 This review finds place on the Deccan Herald here . Thanking the team at Deccan Herald. Amitava Kumar takes us on a journey with trains - a journey where he touches upon history, literature and personal experiences.  He sets the tone in a manner befitting the book, “ the railway lines that criss-cross the country, and are longer even than our majestic rivers, bind the landscape into a whole and give it a sense of a nation ”. He has us revisit classics like Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi , Gulzar’s Raavi Paar , Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah , Dushyant Kumar’s Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai , Bhisham Sahni’s Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai , and others. With a keen eye, comfort in multiple languages, and dexterity with words he elucidates the role of trains in these poems, movies, and books, and as a corollary in our soci...

A book I recently read, and enjoyed About the book Title: The Lost Bookshop  Author: Evie Woods Publisher: One More Chapter (Harper Collins)  First Published: 2023 ISBN: 978-0-00-860921-4 Pages: 434 Genre: Fiction Price: 599/- What I liked about the book Has 3 parallel stories spanning 2 timelines The author is good with words and has enjoyed writing the book Frequently mentions other books and authors  Characters converse with historical personalities (including authors)   The section where story turns sad was touching  Page turner with the pace picking up towards the end  Different from what little I have read recently Magic realism  Few lines that stood out  It was such a terrible excuse, it must have been the truth It is only in something’s absence that you realise how much space it takes up At least in children’s books nothing terrible happened, and if it did, it always got fixed by the end People don’t like it when you tell them things you s...

Old Path White Clouds People wiser have taught us how it is the book that decides how and when it will interact with us and not the other way round. Old Path White Clouds underscored this dictum yet again for me. It is 7 months now that we had purchased the book (from, of course, our favourite book store ). Since, it sat (needless to add, peacefully) on the rack - an arm's length from where we sit and chat at the end of each day.   Reading Old Path White Clouds accompanied by the vacation sounds (read quality silences) on the campus has been special. I had enjoyed, on similar lines, my time with the two books I had read during the previous vacation - Learning from silence and Sachha Sur .  Like I did with the previous two books, with this book too, I went slow and after every few pages or so I took a break to absorb what I had read. The mahaul around only helped - the silences outside gelling aptly with the inner silences, peace, and calm these books talk about.  I read...

Gender and craftwork in rural society: The role of education  Author: Nidhi Gaur  ISBN: 978-1-032-84327-6  First published: 2025  Publisher: Routledge  Pages: 181 The review up at Teacher Plus here .  Warmly thanking Teacher Plus and Routeledge . Is craft-centred education the way to go? This book is an outcome of the author, Nidhi Gaur’s, study of Anand Niketan in Wardha, Maharashtra. This is a school where “ Work is not associated with particular people; rather, it is perceived simply as work that needs to be done. ” The first chapter, Introduction, deftly conveys what the book is all about; it states, “ So far, craft-centred education has not been studied from the perspective of gender, so this study revisits an older idea with a new perspective. ” The book has been neatly structured over nine chapters spread across 181 pages. The final chapter, Implications and conclusion, succinctly sums up the learning – “ The examination of the pedagogy of crafts ha...

Learning from silence  Pico Iyer  Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India  2025  ISBN 9780143474364  Pages 214  Price 599/-  Thanks Eesha for the suggestions on the draft.  One could talk about silence as " quiet " or " absence of sound " or just " silence " or on similar lines. Or one can be eloquent like Chesterton was on the colour white ( he described it as a strong colour in itself, not an absence of colour, drew parallels with virtue and so ). In this book Pico Iyer takes the Chesterton path, only he goes way deeper. He writes about what silence has meant to him over the years as he consciously put in more and more time with it, how people he looks up to understand silence, what it has done to him as a person, and more. The text flows smoothly as he opens up and talks about his family, the people he bumped into at the retreat, the conversations with them, and the forest-fires which impacted his home and the retreat, as he describes how s...