By Purva Grover

My family takes pride in our ownership of an analogue weighing scale. We’re fit, but not obsessed with inches. So the scale has little to do with our fitness goals. It stays hidden under the bed throughout the year. Its occasional outing and pride moment arises when it’s time for me to make a return trip from New Delhi to Dubai. We brush the dust off the scale and realign the scale to ‘zero’. I am weighed. That’s the harsh step one. Next, I, the passenger, weigh myself again; this time holding my suitcase. We’re obsessed with grams (when flying), not inches.

Continue reading This year, I flew back with 29.05kgs and 34 books →

By Emily Thomas

A tribute to Mr. Dahl, the real ‘BFG,’ as we get ready to stream into his make-believe world.

It must’ve been a particular magical day in Cardiff, Wales, with many whimsical musings adrift; the day that Roald Dahl was born. Over a century later, the well-loved author’s enchanting tales continue to delight readers everywhere and are reimagined across platforms. And Netflix is the latest to do so.

Continue reading Click play to Roald on →

By Anita Iyer

On my last visit home in May, I found a worn-out copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer among the other books that needed dusting.

Continue reading We’ve all used a bus ticket as a bookmark at some point, right? →

By Maán Jalal

I’m looking at my goddaughter, who is five, unwrapping the present I have given her. She tears the wrapping slowly at first, then rips it open with one swipe, giggling as she turns over the hardcover of a rather substantially-sized book. Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, I read her the title. As I explain what the book is about, she turns the pages and looks at the illustrations.

Continue reading Why, for 18 months, I focused on reading only Arab authors →

By Maán Jalal

On May 14, the American author and journalist Tom Wolfe passed away at the age of 88. A satirist, social commentator and observer, Wolfe was a writer whose style changed journalism and influenced a generation of writers after him. Wolfe’s novels forced us take a closer look at society and what we are preconditioned to worship within it. He wrote about social status, our obsession with it and the anxiety it causes — a subject that will never seize to be relevant.

Continue reading What is with this misplaced obsession with ‘greatness’? →