"Plotting is important in the murder mystery genre, but there have been times when my characters have done things I hadn't planned for them to do, and these have been the most rewarding moments in my writing" - Meeti Shroff-Shah, author, The Death of Kirti Kadakia.

"I felt I had the courage to own up to who I am and to my truest authentic self. And that is a superpower." - Kubbra Sait, actor and author, 'Open Book; Not Quite a Memoir', talks to Manjula Narayan about playing Cuckoo in Sacred Games, overcoming being abused as a teen, and keeping calm in the competitive Bollywood #BooksAndAuthors podcast.

Scars of 1947 is a book based on the real stories of India's Independence and everything it costed to the people of both the sides. The fears, the cries of help and a lot more that has affected the lives of many. In the stories collected by Rajeev Shukla for his book "Scars of 1947" you will get to know about the deep grief of people who were affected by the Partition of India and also some great inspiring tales of love & the perseverance of the human spirit.

Growing up in Amritsar in the 1960s, watching jets flying overhead during the 1965 war, being struck by Hindi film lyrics, domestic tragedies, the contrasting milieu at home and at school, fighting street sexual harassment, and memories of school friends... Actor Deepti Naval talks to Manjula Narayan about her memoir A Country Called Childhood, which recreates a vanished time in India's recent history.

"Construction workers are highly invisibilized. Their world is a small world within our world and at points, I thought of the construction site as a metaphor for a growing India with its linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity. You find Hindus, Muslims and Christians on the site sharing and collaborating to an extent but also segregated in other aspects of their lives." - Simon Lamouret, author, The Alcazar, a graphic novel based on the lives of workers on a building site in Bengaluru talks to @utterflea about his friendship with the workers, being inspired by Herge's drawing style, and about all the things this project made him think about.

"For women to stay the course, you need to have better infrastructure and better support systems because, really, that is the reason most women seem to not be able to manage. We need creches, homes for the elderly... Typically, it is (the absence of) these things that hold women back."

"Myth is not fictitious. It is actually truer than real life because it talks about an internal deep reality, which is truer than truth." - Meena Arora Nayak, author, Adbhut, Marvellous Creatures of Indian Myth and Folklore talks to Manjula Narayan about myth and meaning in the Books and Authors podcast.

"Antibiotics don't work on Drug-Resistant TB, which should worry all of us. The post-antibiotic era is dawning on us." - Vidya Krishnan, author of Phantom Plague; How Tuberculosis Shaped History talks to Manjula Narayan on this week's Books & Authors podcast about the persistence of TB that has evolved with humanity, about the abuse of antibiotics that has made it more virulent, and about the scientific racism that keeps Indian sufferers from getting the best new drugs.

"Manto is not just a witness to history in his stories; he is an active agent of history. He is the subject of history. It is very compelling" - Nasreen Rehman, the translator, of The Collected Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, talks to @utterflea about Manto's deep feelings for Bombay, his iconoclasm that made the Progressive Writers Group wary of him, and why his stories continue to move South Asians.

"The personal is being made political in a very perverse way. My existence itself is anathema to a rising, sizeable force in Indian politics and that upsets me." - Seema Chishti, author of 'Sumitra and Anees' talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast about her mother's recipes, her parents' inter religious marriage, and about all that India was and can be.