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Pumped with post-lockdown confidence in her green thumb, Arti Dwarkadas said yes to her friend Suzann’s hare-brained scheme of buying land. From negotiating with sceptical villagers and unruly cows, every misstep becomes a lesson, and every harvest a tiny miracle. Yet beneath the comedy of errors lies something deeper: a fresh look at what it truly means to work with one’s hands, live close to the land and make a small but genuine difference in the world. This is a laugh-out-loud chronicle of their journey so far.

Vinita Gupta was in her twenties when she left India to work in the US, where she co-founded Digital Link Corporation, leading it for nearly two decades. In this memoir, she writes about the struggles and triumphs of business innovation as well as the complexity of life as a wife and mother attempting to balance work and personal commitments. But more than that, it is her journey into discovering who she is.

Two months into the lockdown, journalist Jyoti Yadav set out to cover the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and the migrant exodus unfolding across the country. She travelled on the highway and passing through small towns and villages, she documented the migrant crisis and the breakdown of India’s healthcare infrastructure. She set out again when the far deadlier second wave struck. This book is a riveting chronicle of the unremitting tragedy that Covid was and the resilience that also sometimes accompanied it.

On May 3, 2023, decades of differences, aggravated by grievances over land and identity issues, between the Kuki-Zomi/Mizo tribes and the majority Meitei community in Manipur, spilled over resulting in deadly clashes. The author describes the night of terror when her parents’ home in the tribal enclave in Imphal was burnt down. She recounts the ruthless beheading of David Thiek and the stripping of two women. This book is a portrait of love for one’s homeland and the incredible pain of losing it forever.