BOOK REVIEW: DEBTS OF SILENCEDEBTS OF SILENCEby Prashant Kumar Lal

BOOK REVIEW: DEBTS OF SILENCE

DEBTS OF SILENCE
by Prashant Kumar Lal

Available on All the Amazon Platforms Worldwide in Paperback and digital format

A literary crime novel — Mumbai · Dubai · London
A murder mystery, a love story, and a reckoning with inherited grief, told across three cities and fifteen years
There is a particular kind of crime novel that uses its plot as scaffolding for something considerably more personal, and Debts of Silence belongs unmistakably to that tradition. On its surface, this is the story of Divya Rao, a forensic accountant and former CBI officer, drawn into investigating the death of textile-and-fintech tycoon Rajan Malhotra the night before he was to announce a merger that would launder a network of stolen Indian antiquities through a Dubai free port and a London auction house. Underneath that surface, though, runs a quieter, more aching plot: a daughter’s fifteen-year search for the truth about her own father’s death, and her slow, reluctant discovery that the two cases were never separate at all.

Structure and Pacing

The novel is organised in three parts — Mumbai, Dubai, London — and this geographic architecture does real narrative work rather than functioning as mere travelogue. Part One (“The Study”) is the book’s strongest sustained stretch: patient, atmospheric, confident enough to let scenes breathe.

Lal lingers over small physical details — a whisky glass moved half an inch from where it started, the particular over-sweetness of incense laid on to cover something rather than honour it — and trusts the reader to understand that in a forensic mystery, the smallest material facts are the plot. The chapter in which Divya first examines Rajan Malhotra’s study is a genuine set piece, doing the work of establishing both procedure and grief in the same unhurried paragraphs.
Part Two (“The Free Zone”) shifts registers effectively, trading Mumbai’s humid, incense-thick interiors for Dubai’s glass-and-desert glare, and it’s here that the novel’s romantic plot — between Divya and Arjun Malhotra, the murdered man’s estranged nephew and unlikely heir — takes on real weight rather than functioning as a subplot bolted onto the mystery. The rooftop scene in particular earns its emotional turn; it’s preceded by enough genuine conversation, enough shared risk, that the shift from professional alliance to something more feels inevitable rather than contractual.
Part Three (“The Saleroom”) carries the heaviest narrative burden — the reveal of the true architect behind fifteen years of buried deaths, an Interpol notice engineered to remove Arjun from the board before the climax, a public reckoning on an auction floor — and largely succeeds, though it is worth noting for prospective readers that the emotional and sensory density Lal establishes so carefully in Parts One and Two occasionally outpaces the final movement’s ability to match it scene for scene.

The revelation that the “man who was never in the room” is Vinod Ranade — the family’s own trusted lawyer, present at every crisis by invitation and therefore never once suspected — is a genuinely well-seeded twist; the clue, planted in Divya’s father’s audit (“find who is never in the room, and you will find who I am truly afraid of”), rewards attentive readers without feeling like a cheat. What works less cleanly is the compression of consequence: Kapadia’s plea, Al-Fahim’s cooperation agreement, Rathod’s disappearance, and Meera’s quiet reinvention all arrive in a relatively tight sequence, and a reader who has spent three hundred-odd pages with these characters may reasonably want more room to sit with each reckoning individually rather than receiving them in summary.

Character and Voice

Divya Rao is the novel’s clear achievement. Lal resists the temptation to make her either invulnerable or decorative; her competence is real and hard-won, but so is her fear, and the novel is at its best when it lets her be frightened without becoming fragile — the scooter brake-line sequence and the sealed-container chapters both understand that suspense works better through a protagonist’s disciplined management of terror than through its absence. Arjun is a more conventional romantic figure — the prodigal heir, the man running from a family he loves and distrusts in equal measure — but his professional identity as an art restorer is put to real use rather than treated as colour; his ability to read a bronze’s repair scar or a crate’s strapping tension becomes, cleverly, a detective skill in its own right.

The supporting cast is where the novel’s moral seriousness shows most clearly. Nilofer Khan, the longtime executive assistant who has kept the family’s secrets for twenty-six years, is given genuine interiority rather than serving as a mere plot device for exposition — her late confession that she mistook a powerful man’s trust for her own virtue is one of the book’s sharper psychological observations, and one that gives the novel’s title its real charge: hers is a debt paid out in decades of silence, not currency.

Kapadia is drawn with real sympathy as a coward rather than a villain, which is a harder and more interesting choice than the alternative.

Prose and Theme

Lal’s prose favours long, accumulating sentences — clauses stacked on clauses, arriving at their point only after several qualifying turns — which suits a novel about the slow excavation of buried truth, though it occasionally risks over-explaining an emotion the scene has already earned through action or dialogue. The novel’s recurring image — ash, incense, the residue left behind once something has been burned away or covered over — is deployed with genuine discipline; it never curdles into overreach. And the title itself is honestly earned rather than merely decorative: nearly every character in this novel is, in some fashion, paying down a debt incurred by years of silence — Nilofer’s, Kapadia’s, Ranade’s most of all, and even Divya’s own fifteen-year silence about her father’s death, which she finally, at real cost, breaks.

Thematically, the novel’s real subject is complicity — the thousand small, individually defensible compromises (a coroner reconsidering his notes, a lawyer redrafting a will, an analyst deciding to wait until morning) that collectively build the machinery capable of burying a murder for fifteen years. This is a more interesting argument than most commercial thrillers attempt, and Lal is at his best when he lets the novel sit with it rather than resolving it too neatly.

Verdict

Debts of Silence is a confident, atmospheric debut into literary crime fiction — strongest in its opening movement, warmest in its handling of Divya and Arjun’s relationship, and most ambitious in its refusal to let its villain be a simple monster rather than a man built slowly, over thirty years, out of small surrenders. Readers who enjoy a mystery that takes its time, trusts its setting, and cares as much about grief as about plot mechanics will find a great deal to admire here.

“A mystery that takes its time, trusts its setting, and cares as much about grief as about plot mechanics.”

Who Should Read This Book

Debts of Silence is best suited to readers who enjoy literary crime fiction that favours atmosphere and moral complexity over pure procedural pace — readers of authors such as Vikram Chandra, Kate Morton, or Abir Mukherjee will find familiar pleasures here. More specifically, the novel should appeal to:

• Fans of slow-burn detective fiction who prefer a mystery built on patient observation and character study rather than rapid-fire action.
• Readers drawn to international, multi-city thrillers that use setting — Mumbai’s old wealth, Dubai’s free-zone commerce, London’s auction world — as more than backdrop.
• Readers of family-saga fiction who enjoy inheritance plots, generational secrets, and the slow unravelling of a trusted household.
• Romance-adjacent crime readers who want a genuine, earned relationship arc alongside the investigation rather than a perfunctory subplot.
• Anyone interested in the antiquities trade, cultural repatriation, or the ethics of the art market, which the novel treats with real seriousness rather than as exotic colour.
• Readers who appreciated the moral ambiguity of a novel like A Suitable Boy or the quiet menace of a Ruth Rendell mystery will find a kindred sensibility in Lal’s handling of complicity and cowardice.
  
• Content note: the novel includes scenes of violence, one sustained sequence of peril, and tasteful but clearly adult romantic content; it is intended for adult readers rather than a young-adult audience.
  
• About the Author
  Prashant Kumar Lal is an educator, writer and former school principal whose professional life has been shaped by a sustained interest in human behaviour, institutions and the often-unspoken forces that influence the choices people make.
  
• With several decades devoted to education and school leadership, he has worked extensively with students, teachers, parents and educational institutions, moving beyond the classroom into academic administration, teacher development, assessment and educational consultancy. Alongside this professional journey, writing has remained a quieter and more personal pursuit — a way of examining memory, relationships, values, human frailty, and the questions that persist beneath ordinary life.
  As an author, Lal has written across several genres, including reflective prose, educational literature, childhood memoir and fiction, marked throughout by an interest in the intersection of the visible and the concealed — what people say, what they withhold, and what eventually reveals itself despite their efforts to keep it hidden.
  
• Debts of Silence marks his deliberate movement into literary crime fiction. Set across Mumbai, Dubai and London, the novel brings together forensic accountancy, financial concealment, antiquities trafficking, family inheritance and an unresolved death. At its centre is Divya Rao, a forensic accountant whose professional instinct for discrepancies gradually becomes a deeply personal search for truth.
  For Lal, the investigation is not merely a pursuit of a murderer. It is an examination of how wrongdoing survives through systems — through transactions, omissions, compromised loyalties and convenient silences. Prashant Kumar Lal continues to write with the conviction that a story should entertain the reader, but should also leave behind a question worth carrying beyond the final page.

Genre: Literary Crime Fiction / Mystery-Thriller
Setting: Mumbai · Dubai · London
Recommended for: Adult readers of literary and international crime fiction
Reviewed for general readership and trade consideration

What are your favorite side-hustle ideas?

Side Hustles: Turning Spare Time into Something Worthwhile

There was a time when a person had a job, earned a salary, returned home and waited patiently for the next payday. Today, the world of work has become considerably more inventive. One income stream is no longer the only stream worth exploring.

Enter the side hustle — that little venture conducted beside your principal occupation, often beginning at a kitchen table, in a spare room or with nothing more than a laptop and an idea.

I rather like the expression side hustle. It sounds energetic, slightly mischievous and wonderfully modern. After all, why should all the hustle belong to the main job?

For me, the most attractive side hustles are not necessarily those promising instant wealth. They are those that combine skill, curiosity, independence and purpose.

1. Writing: Turn Words into Wings

Writing is perhaps one of the most accessible side hustles today.

Blogs, articles, newsletters, e-books, self-publishing, editing and copywriting can all become modest sources of income. More importantly, writing allows experience to acquire a second life.

A retired teacher can write about education. A banker can write about personal finance. A chef can share recipes. A traveller can chronicle journeys. A grandparent can preserve memories for generations yet unborn.

Words cost little to produce, but sometimes they can travel further than their author ever will.

And there is a delightful pun here: when you write for a living, you may discover that your words finally start paying their own way.

2. Online Teaching and Tutoring

Knowledge is one commodity that does not diminish when shared.

Tutoring schoolchildren, teaching languages, conducting examination preparation classes or offering professional training can become a rewarding side venture.

The beauty of teaching online is that geography has lost much of its authority. A teacher in one city can instruct a learner hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away.

It is a particularly meaningful side hustle because you are not merely selling information; you are helping someone understand something that once seemed difficult.

And perhaps that is the finest form of compound interest: knowledge that keeps earning interest in another person’s life.

3. Consulting: Sell Experience, Not Just Hours

Many people underestimate the value of what they already know.

A retired professional may possess decades of experience in management, education, accounting, engineering, human resources, marketing or administration.

Consultancy turns that accumulated experience into a service.

You do not necessarily need a grand office, an impressive reception desk or a wall covered with certificates. Sometimes all you need is credibility, clarity and the ability to solve a problem.

Experience, after all, is one of the few things we collect without realising its value until somebody needs it.

4. Self-Publishing

The traditional publishing world once possessed formidable gates. Today, many of those gates have become doors.

Authors can publish books in paperback, hardcover and digital formats through online platforms. A specialist book may find a small but dedicated readership; a memoir may reach someone who needs its story; a practical guide may help a student or professional.

Self-publishing is not merely about making money. It is about making something that did not exist before.

There is something profoundly satisfying about seeing an idea travel from mind to manuscript to marketplace.

The royalties may begin as a trickle. But even a trickle has somewhere to go if you keep writing.

5. Digital Products

A person can create once and sell many times.

Templates, worksheets, planners, educational resources, study guides, e-books, presentations, photography collections and specialised digital materials can become useful products.

The important word is useful.

The internet is already crowded with things nobody needs. A successful digital product should solve a genuine problem, save time or make somebody’s life easier.

In the digital economy, convenience can be currency.

6. Photography, Art and Creative Work

If you have an artistic inclination, your camera, brush, design software or even smartphone can become a small business tool.

Photographs, illustrations, greeting cards, digital artwork and design services can all find buyers.

Creativity does not always need a boardroom. Sometimes it simply needs a person willing to create consistently.

The artist’s side hustle can therefore become a beautiful paradox: you begin by creating for pleasure and discover that pleasure can sometimes create profit.

7. Content Creation

YouTube channels, podcasts, blogs, newsletters and social-media pages have created entirely new forms of work.

But content creation is not simply about posting frequently. It is about having something worth saying.

A person with knowledge, humour, experience or a distinctive perspective can gradually build an audience.

The key word is gradually.

The internet encourages instant gratification, but meaningful audiences are usually built one reader, viewer or listener at a time.

8. Reselling and Small Online Businesses

Some people have a natural eye for products, bargains and opportunities.

Reselling books, vintage objects, handicrafts, clothing, collectibles or carefully selected products can become a modest business.

But this is where arithmetic must accompany enthusiasm.

Revenue is not profit. A ₹1,000 sale does not mean ₹1,000 earned.

Purchase cost, packaging, delivery, platform charges, taxes, returns and your own time all matter.

A side hustle without bookkeeping can quickly become a side headache.

9. Turning a Hobby into an Income

Perhaps the most enjoyable side hustle is hidden inside something you already love.

Gardening can become plant sales. Baking can become custom orders. Music can become lessons. Cycling can become guided rides. Crafting can become handmade products. Cooking can become workshops.

The trick is not to monetise every hobby.

Some things should remain sacredly uncommercial.

But if a hobby naturally solves a problem for somebody else, there may be a business quietly waiting inside it.

The Side Hustle Should Not Become the Main Hassle

There is one caution worth remembering.

A side hustle should supplement life, not consume it.

If your additional income destroys your sleep, relationships, health or peace of mind, you may have created a second job rather than a useful side venture.

Start small.

Test the idea.

Understand the demand.

Keep proper records.

Do not invest heavily before you know whether people actually want what you are offering.

And above all, do not believe every online promise of “Earn ₹1 lakh a day from your mobile!”

If earning money were that effortless, nobody would be selling courses explaining how to earn it.

The Side Hustle of a Meaningful Life

Perhaps the finest side hustle is not always financial.

Reading can enrich the mind. Writing can preserve memories. Teaching can multiply knowledge. Volunteering can enlarge compassion. Learning something new can keep curiosity alive.

Money matters, certainly. But so does meaning.

A side hustle can therefore become more than a second source of income. It can become a second chapter — especially for someone who has retired from a formal career but has not retired from curiosity.

The real question is not merely:

“What can I do to earn more?”

It may be:

“What can I do with the abilities, experience and time I still possess?”

That question opens considerably more doors.

And perhaps that is the real beauty of a side hustle. It reminds us that life need not have only one profession, one identity or one destination.

Sometimes, the road beside the main road leads somewhere unexpectedly wonderful.

Four Lines to Take Away

Hustle with purpose, but don’t let purpose rush;
Turn your small spark into a steady brush.
Let passion earn, let wisdom grow —
For the best side hustle is the life you sow.

Which relationship has taught you the most about yourself?

The Relationship That Became a Mirror

What another person can teach us about the person we are becoming

Some relationships enter our lives quietly. Others arrive like a monsoon—sudden, overwhelming and impossible to ignore. But the relationships that teach us the most are not always the easiest ones. Sometimes, they are the relationships that make us question ourselves, confront our imperfections and discover strengths we did not know we possessed.

If I were asked which relationship has taught me the most about myself, I would not name a relationship merely because it brought happiness. I would choose the one that became a mirror.

For, a relationship is rarely just about another person. It is also an encounter with ourselves.

The mirror we seldom choose to look into

We often imagine that we know ourselves.

We know what we like, what we dislike, what we believe, what we will tolerate and what we will never accept. Yet, put us in a meaningful relationship and those certainties begin to shift.

Someone’s silence may reveal our impatience.

Someone’s criticism may expose our insecurity.

Someone’s affection may reveal how uncomfortable we are with vulnerability.

And someone’s absence may teach us the value of a presence we once took for granted.

Relationships have a remarkable way of uncovering the person behind the person we think we are.

I discovered that I was not always as patient as I imagined. I learnt that I sometimes wanted to be understood before making the effort to understand. I discovered that being right could occasionally matter more to me than being kind.

These are uncomfortable discoveries.

But they are valuable ones.

Love teaches a different kind of mathematics

There is a strange arithmetic in relationships.

We give, yet receive.

We lose, yet gain.

We compromise, yet sometimes discover ourselves.

We speak less, but understand more.

The deepest relationships teach us that love cannot be measured simply by the number of years spent together or the number of beautiful memories accumulated.

It is measured in the ordinary moments.

A cup of tea left beside someone who is tired.

A question asked when the other person is unusually quiet.

A hand placed gently on a shoulder.

An argument that ends not with victory, but with reconciliation.

A decision to remain when walking away would have been easier.

These seemingly insignificant gestures gradually become the grammar of companionship.

I learnt that I am still a work in progress

Perhaps the greatest lesson a meaningful relationship can teach us is that we are never finished.

Age may bring experience, but it does not necessarily bring wisdom.

We continue to make mistakes.

We continue to misunderstand.

We continue to carry old fears into new situations.

We continue to learn the difficult difference between expectation and acceptance.

A relationship taught me that maturity is not the absence of mistakes. It is the willingness to recognise them without constructing elaborate excuses.

It is being able to say:

I was wrong.

I am sorry.

I could have done better.

Those are small sentences, but they require considerable courage.

The art of listening

One of the most profound lessons relationships teach us is the difference between hearing and listening.

Hearing requires ears.

Listening requires attention.

There were times when I listened merely to prepare my response. I wanted to explain, defend, correct or solve.

But not every conversation requires a solution.

Sometimes a person simply wants to be heard.

Sometimes what appears to be anger is actually hurt.

Sometimes what appears to be indifference is exhaustion.

Sometimes a question is not asking for an answer at all; it is asking for reassurance.

I learnt, slowly, that understanding another person begins when the desire to win an argument ends.

What love revealed about strength

I once thought strength meant remaining unshaken.

I now think otherwise.

Strength can mean admitting that something hurts.

It can mean asking for forgiveness.

It can mean changing an opinion.

It can mean allowing another person to see the vulnerable parts of us that we usually conceal from the world.

Real strength does not always stand erect.

Sometimes it sits quietly beside someone and says, I am here.

That simple presence can be more powerful than a thousand explanations.

And what it taught me about freedom

A healthy relationship does not imprison individuality.

It gives individuality somewhere safe to exist.

We are not required to become identical to the people we love. We can have different interests, different opinions, different rhythms and even different ways of seeing the world.

The beauty lies in remaining two individuals while creating something larger than either person alone.

Perhaps that is what companionship really means—not possessing another human being, but accompanying them.

There is a profound difference.

Possession says, You belong to me.

Companionship says, I will walk beside you.

The relationship continues to teach

Some relationships teach us through joy.

Some through disagreement.

Some through sacrifice.

Some through loss.

And some continue teaching us long after the particular moment that prompted the lesson has passed.

The person may never know how much they changed us.

They may never realise that a conversation from years ago altered the way we see life.

They may never know that their kindness became a memory we carried through difficult days.

That is the mysterious influence human beings have upon one another.

We leave traces.

A sentence.

A gesture.

A lesson.

A scar.

A smile.

A memory.

And sometimes, without intending to, we become part of another person’s understanding of themselves.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson of all

When I look back, I realise that the relationship that taught me the most about myself did not simply tell me who I was.

It showed me who I could become.

More patient.

More forgiving.

Less certain of my own correctness.

More willing to listen.

More conscious of the fragility of human emotions.

And perhaps, above everything else, more grateful.

Because relationships are not merely chapters in our lives.

They are classrooms.

Some lessons are easy.

Some are painful.

Some take decades to understand.

But the finest relationships leave us with a strange and beautiful realisation:

We thought we were learning about another person.

All along, we were learning about ourselves.

The Business of Silence: Reclaiming Attention in an Accelerated World

If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?

The Business of Silence: Reclaiming Attention in an Accelerated World

The canvas of modern commerce is crowded with noise—apps that save seconds we spend on nothing, platforms that connect everyone while deepening our isolation, and products designed to be discarded the moment their newer iteration arrives. If I were to anchor a new business in the current landscape, it would not be another engine of acceleration. It would be a enterprise of quiet restoration: A Sanctuarium of Digital Sabbatical and Artisanal Restraint.

The Architecture of the Enterprise

We live in an age of cognitive over-consumption. The human spirit was never constructed to process the unending stream of global anxiety, algorithmic notifications, and fragmented attention that defines the digital default. Our attention has become the primary commodity of the twenty-first century, harvested by systems engineered to keep us perpetually restless.

This venture—let us call it The Quietude Guild—would operate at the precise intersection of hospitality, philosophy, and practical technology. It would offer physical retreats and structured protocols designed to guide individuals back to deep work, sustained contemplation, and the lost art of unhurried craftsmanship.

       [ Digital Noise & Fragmented Attention ]
                          │
                          ▼
            [ The Quietude Guild ]
          ┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
          ▼               ▼               ▼
     [ Physical      [ Analog         [ Digital
     Sanctuaries ]   Craftsmanship ]  Sabbatical ]
          │               │               │
          └───────────────┼───────────────┘
                          ▼
            [ Restoration of Focus ]

Key Pillars of the Venture

• Architectural Silence: Specially designed spaces built far from dense signal networks, constructed using native stone, timber, and lime plaster. These physical environments use acoustic insulation and natural light to calm the central nervous system.
• The Technology of Limits: Rather than rejecting technology outright, the enterprise develops purposefully restricted devices—typewriters with cloud synchronization, monochrome ink displays dedicated solely to long-form reading, and communication hubs that process messages only twice daily.
• Artisanal Re-anchoring: Workshops centred on physical mediums—woodworking, binding books by hand, ceramics, and traditional agriculture. The goal is not commercial production, but the therapeutic recovery of cause and effect through physical labour.
• Cognitive Architecture Services: Guidance for organizations seeking to rebuild their operational rhythms, moving away from real-time messaging towards asynchronous, deep-focus cultures.

Why Now? A Philosophical Imperative

To build a business today without considering the soul of the user is to build upon quicksand. We have optimized every physical convenience, yet internal disquiet remains at an all-time high. A truly transformative business in this decade must be an act of counter-culture—it must offer what the modern world has made scarce.

“In an age of speed, nothing can be more invigorating than slowness. In an age of distraction, nothing can be more luxurious than paying attention.”

By commercializing restraint rather than consumption, The Quietude Guild turns the traditional business model on its head. It measures value not by time spent on a screen, but by the clarity and peace restored to a human mind when it steps away.

I Chew, Therefore I Am: A …-Year-Old’s Guide to Eating Like a Philosopher Who Actually Enjoys His Lunch

What are your best healthy eating habits?

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I Chew, Therefore I Am: A …-Year-Old’s Guide to Eating Like a Philosopher Who Actually Enjoys His Lunch

I have spent a lifetime eating. Not in the Instagram-influencer, protein-shake-and-kale sense, but in the sincere, slightly obsessive, very human sense. After six decades of culinary triumphs and spectacular self-inflicted gastric tragedies, I have arrived at a few eating habits that have not only kept me healthy but have kept me sane.

I share them here not as a nutritionist — heaven forbid — but as a fellow traveller who has finally learned that food is not fuel. Fuel is what you put in a Morris Minor. Food is philosophy with flavour.

1. The Sacred Art of Actually Chewing

For years, I inhaled my meals like a Dyson on turbo. I thought speed was efficiency. The Stoics would have called this folly. The modern gastroenterologist calls it heartburn.

My first and best habit now: I chew. Thirty-two times, if you want a number. Not because some Victorian naturopath said so, but because if you are going to put a samosa in your mouth, you owe it the courtesy of a proper conversation before you swallow it.

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can bear almost any how.” I say, he who has a why should at least chew the how. Chewing is meditation. It is the only time in adult life when doing less, more slowly, makes you look wiser rather than lazy.

2. I Do Not Dine With My Phone. The Phone Dines Alone.

I used to eat with my phone propped up, scrolling through headlines about how everything we eat will kill us. The sheer existential irony was lost on me.

Now, I have a rule: no screens at the table. No news, no reels, no urgent WhatsApp forwards about turmeric curing existential dread.

The plate deserves monogamy. When you eat while watching a political debate, your body doesn’t know whether to digest the dal or the argument. It usually fails at both. The result is what Sartre might have called nausea, and what my wife correctly calls indigestion.

Eat with humans. Or eat alone, like a monk. Both are noble. Eating with your phone is just an anxious ménage à trois.

3. Eat Less Than Your Ego Wants, More Than Your Guilt Allows

In my twenties, I ate to show off. In my thirties, I ate to cope. In my forties, I ate because the thali was unlimited.

Philosophy taught me temperance, but experience taught me portion size.

I now follow what I call the 80% Doctrine. I stop when I am 80% full. That remaining 20% is where wisdom lives. It is also where the second helping of biryani lives, but we cannot have everything. Aristotle called it the Golden Mean. My grandmother called it, “Leave some room, or you’ll snore like a tractor.”

Hunger, I’ve learned, is a terrible master but an excellent advisor. Listen to it; don’t obey it.

4. Breakfast Like a King, Lunch Like a Prince, Supper Like a Pauper Who Has Read Camus

I front-load my day. A proper breakfast — eggs, fruit, oats, or a gloriously unapologetic South Indian spread — is non-negotiable. Lunch is substantial and respectful. Supper is light, early, and exists purely to give my dreams something pleasant to work with.

Eating a heavy meal at 10 p.m. is not dinner; it is a dare to your metabolism. The universe is absurd, as Camus said, but there is no need to make your digestive system prove his point at midnight.

5. Gratitude Before Gluttony

This is my most unfashionable habit. Before I eat, I pause. For two seconds. Not to pray to the god of protein macros, but to actually acknowledge that this food exists, that someone grew it, cooked it, and that I am lucky enough to afford it.

It sounds soppy. It is revolutionary. In a world that treats food as content, gratitude turns it back into sustenance. It stops you from eating like a dustbin and starts you eating like a human being.

Try it. Your rotis will taste better. I promise.

The Final Bite

My best eating habits, then, are not about superfoods or superhuman discipline. They are about behaving as though eating still matters.

We live in an age that wants us to optimise everything — even our lunch. To track it, to hack it, to biohack it until all joy has been thoroughly extracted and replaced with data.

I prefer to chew slowly, to put my phone away, to leave the table slightly hungry and entirely content, and to remember that a good meal, like a good life, is not about how much you consume, but how fully you taste it.

After all, Socrates never said, “Let food be thy medicine” — that was Hippocrates. Socrates was too busy asking what food means. And frankly, after a good rasam, I think I finally have an answer.

Bon appétit. Or as we say in proper UK English: tuck in.

Book Review: Debts of Silence by Prashant Kumar Lal

Where Every Ledger Hides a Ghost — A Bombay Noir That Audits the Soul

Book Review: Debts of Silence by Prashant Kumar Lal

Available on All the Amazon Platforms Worldwide

Genre: Crime Thriller / Forensic Mystery / Literary Noir
Setting: Contemporary Bombay

Debts of Silence is not your conventional whodunit. It is a forensic procedural with a conscience — a novel that asks what price we pay for the truths we choose not to speak.

The Premise

The tagline says it all, and brilliantly so: Forensic Auditor. Haunted CBI Past. A Trail of Hidden Assets. Bombay’s Smoking Ruins. A Sacred Object, A Deadly Price.

Our protagonist is a former CBI officer turned forensic auditor — a woman who trades in numbers, not hunches, and whose gloves are both literal and metaphorical. Crouching in a rain-slicked Bombay lane, ledger in one hand and a sacred, charred relic in the other, she is called to unearth the truth from ashes — both financial and human. When a trail of benami assets, burnt files, and a revered object collides with the smoking ruins of the city, her audit becomes an exorcism of her own past.

Lal sets up a compelling high-concept hook: what if the biggest fraud isn’t on the balance sheet, but in our silence?

Character and Craft

The choice of a female forensic auditor as the lead is refreshing and timely. She is not the hard-drinking, rule-breaking detective of old Bombay noir; she is meticulous, observant, and quietly haunted. Her CBI past gives her grit, but her present as an auditor gives her method — a fascinating duality that Lal exploits well.

Bombay itself is the second protagonist. Rendered in monsoon noir — wet pavements, shuttered bakeries, distant church spires, auto-rickshaws blurring past — the city feels lived-in and bruised. You can almost smell the rain on hot concrete and the smoke from something recently burnt.

Themes That Resonate

This is more than a crime novel. Lal, with a keen eye for systems, explores:

The Cost of Complicity: How institutional silence becomes a debt that compounds with interest.
Faith vs. Finance: The collision of a sacred object with the profanity of hidden wealth is a masterstroke. It asks whether some things should remain beyond valuation.
Truth as Forensics: The idea of “unearthing the truth of ashes” is powerful — both as a literal forensic act and as a metaphor for post-tragedy India.

Writing Style

Lal’s prose is atmospheric and precise, much like his protagonist’s work. The narrative is lean, visual, and cinematic — you can see this on screen. The cover itself tells you the author thinks in frames. His background lends authenticity to the forensic audit trail — the jargon never feels forced, the process feels real — without losing the lay reader in spreadsheets.

The pacing is deliberately slow-burn in the first act, establishing mood and motive, before tightening into a taut second half.

What Works Exceptionally Well

Original Protagonist: A forensic auditor is a first for Indian crime fiction and instantly memorable.
Authenticity of Detail: The world of hidden assets, shell companies, and investigative procedure rings true.
Mood and Place: A superb sense of Bombay noir that avoids cliché.

A Small Note

If there is one place where the novel could breathe more, it is in the personal stakes. The “haunted past” is hinted at so tantalisingly on the cover that one craves a few more quiet, interior moments with our auditor when she is not auditing. A deeper dive into her CBI exit wound would make her final reckoning even more devastating.

Final Verdict

Debts of Silence is an assured, intelligent, and deeply atmospheric debut. It succeeds because it refuses to be just a thriller — it is a story about how numbers never lie, but people do, and how some debts can never be written off.

For fans of S. Hussain Zaidi’s gritty Bombay, Meeti Shroff Shah’s forensic detail, and classic noir with a modern, ethical core, this is a must-read.

It doesn’t just solve a crime. It audits it.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

A searing, sophisticated thriller that proves the most dangerous ruins are not those left by fire, but those left by silence.

The Art of Not Falling Apart: Confessions of a Chronically Optimised Human

What are some life hacks that you practice?

The Art of Not Falling Apart: Confessions of a Chronically Optimised Human

I have never been one for those austere, joyless productivity gurus who tell you to wake up at 4 a.m., drink celery water, and journal your way to enlightenment. Life, in my experience, is far too gloriously chaotic for that. So over the years, I have developed a personal arsenal of life hacks — not to become a billionaire or a monk, but simply to avoid losing my keys, my temper, and my spectacles (which are usually perched on my own head).

Here are the ones I actually practise, with almost embarrassing regularity.

1. The Sacred ‘Oh, For Heaven’s Sake’ Basket

Every home has a Bermuda Triangle. Mine used to be the entire house. Now, everything that has no fixed abode — remote controls, rogue chargers, inexplicable Allen keys from flat-pack furniture, and those loyalty cards you swear you will use — goes into one rather handsome wicker basket by the door. I call it the Basket of Existential Dread.

It does not organise anything. It merely organises the chaos into one location. When guests arrive, I look tidy. When I need something, I know exactly which pit of despair to rummage through. It is minimalism for the morally flexible.

2. The Two-Minute Tyranny Rule

The internet says: “If it takes less than two minutes, do it now.” I say: “If it takes less than two minutes, do it now, or it will take on a life of its own and begin to judge you.”

Replying to that message, rinsing that mug, hanging up that shirt — if I don’t do it immediately, my brain will file it under ‘Urgent and Deeply Personal’ and remind me at 2:17 a.m. with full orchestral accompaniment. Swift action is not about efficiency; it is about preventing future me from staging a full-blown internal tribunal.

3. I Name My Chargers Like Royal Heirs

I have stopped pretending I am a person who remembers which cable does what. So now, they have names and personalities. Sir Charges-A-Lot is the long, reliable one for the laptop. The Diva is the temperamental fast-charger that only works at a certain angle, under certain moon phases. The Usurper is a cheap knock-off that gets dangerously hot and is treated with appropriate suspicion.

Labelling them with tiny bits of washi tape has saved me from that primal scream of plugging in a dead phone overnight only to discover I used the cable that charges at the speed of continental drift.

4. The Strategic Lie to Myself

My calendar is a work of creative fiction. If I need to be somewhere at 6 p.m., I tell myself it starts at 5:40 p.m. I know I am lying. My brain knows I am lying. Yet, astonishingly, it still falls for it. Every single time.

It is the only healthy relationship I have where gaslighting is not only acceptable but actively encouraged. I arrive on time, slightly smug, and everyone thinks I have finally become a punctual adult. I have not. I have just become a more cunning procrastinator.

5. The Photo Inventory of Genius

Before I dismantle anything — a plug socket, the inside of a cupboard, the alarming tangle of wires behind the television — I take a photograph. A dozen, actually, from angles that would make a crime scene photographer proud.

My memory is a magnificent palace, but the storage room for ‘where that tiny screw went’ has been permanently closed for renovation. The photo saves me from that classic finale where you have three leftover parts and a profound sense of unease.

6. The ‘Do Not Engage Before Tea’ Protocol

I have learned, through many regrettable emails, that I am not to be trusted with decisions, opinions, or heavy machinery before my first cup of tea.

So, all important notifications are on silent until 8 a.m. The world can wait. The world, in fact, should wait. Nothing good has ever come from replying to a passive-aggressive message whilst still half-composed of dreams and bedsheets.

In short, my life hacks are not about hacking life at all. They are about making peace with it. They are small, slightly ridiculous treaties I have signed with my own forgetfulness, laziness, and flair for drama.

They will not change the world. But they do mean I can always find my spectacles.

And that, dear reader, feels like victory enough.