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I discovered Shanta Gokhale the way most people discover writers who change them – by accident, in a second-hand bookstore on Grant Road, on a Tuesday afternoon when I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. The spine was cracked, the pages had that particular yellow that comes from sitting in Mumbai humidity for years. Rita Welinkar. I bought it for Rs 20 and read it standing at the bus stop, then sitting on the bus, then walking home from the bus stop because I couldn’t stop reading. That was 15 years ago, and I still have that copy, more broken now, with notes in the margins in three different colours of ink from three different readings.

I’ve returned to Gokhale’s work dozens of times since – not for comfort, but for clarity. For the reminder that writing can be both scalpel and mirror, that you can dissect a life without draining it of blood, that you can love a city and still document its failures. On December 3, 2025, at the 19th Crossword Book Awards held at The LaLit Mumbai, Shanta Gokhale received the Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming the fifth recipient after Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty, Shashi Tharoor, and Amitav Ghosh. Her longtime friend,...

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