The Reading List by Bahrisons Booksellers

What brings thousands of people to Daryaganj every Sunday in search of books?In this episode of The Reading List, Kanupriya Dhingra joins us to talk about The Sunday Book Bazaar, the history of the market, the craft of bookselling, and the readers who return week after week.What happens when a natural bazaar is compelled to move into a more regulated space? And who gets to belong in a changing city?A conversation about books, reading, community, and the people who keep a city’s reading culture alive.

Getting an H-1B visa can feel like winning the lottery. But what happens once you have it?In this episode of The Reading List, journalist and author Tanul Thakur joins us to talk about Wild Wild East and the complicated reality behind one of America's most coveted visas. We talk about the hopes that bring Indian workers and students to the US, the complex web of intermediaries built around the H-1B visa, and what happens when the promise of opportunity doesn't quite match the reality.There’s another side to this story: American workers, the changing nature of work, and the growing inequalities within the tech industry.It's a conversation about ambition, migration, and the price of chasing a better life.

What really happened in the twenty-one days leading up to India's Independence?In this episode of The Reading List, Josy Joseph takes us into the world of his new book, Birth of a Nation, where the future of India was still being negotiated and contested. We explore the complicated world of the princely states and the many political forces trying to influence their decisions.But this is also a story about the people who worked to bring the Republic into being, many of whom have since faded from our collective memory. We talk about why these forgotten stories matter, and what they can still teach us about the country we live in today.

History remembers poets. But what happens to the women history leaves behind?In this episode of The Reading List, we sit down with Tarana Husain Khan to discuss her latest novel, The Courtesan, Her Lover and I, inspired by the real-life story of Urdu poet Dagh Dehlvi and the courtesan, artist, and poet Munni Bai Hijab.We explore how Hijab has been remembered, the silences that still surround her life, the care it takes to reconstruct someone whose story survives only in fragments, and the delicate balance between history and fiction.This is a conversation about love, memory, storytelling, and what it means to write someone back into history.

Every family has its own history, contradictions, and power dynamics.This week on The Reading List, we're joined by Karan Mahajan to discuss his new novel, The Complex, set against the backdrop of a changing India. Together, we explore the beautiful and messy reality of large Indian families, the lasting legacy of Partition, and the expectations placed on daughters and daughters-in-law. We also discuss the gap between the promise of the American Dream and the reality many migrants experience, and why the idea of home continues to shape us across generations.Whether you've grown up in a joint family or not, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at memory, belonging, and the enduring ties that bind. How much of who we become is shaped by the family we inherit?