BOOKS OF THE WEEK

THE DARK-COLOURED WATERS : A Journey Along River Chenab by Danesh Rana 

ABOUT THE BOOK
The Dark-Coloured Waters is as much the story of a river as it is of a man shaped by its course.
Danesh Rana has had a profound connection with the Chenab. As a child, it flanked family road trips to Kashmir. In the 1990s, it ran through the newspaper headlines of bloodshed and militancy. And in 2002, it flowed past his police station in Ramban during a tense posting flat the heart of conflict. In 2018, on election duty in Himachal Pradesh, Rana arrived at the river’s source – a symbolic homecoming that compelled him to write this book.
Spanning decades and landscapes, The Dark-Coloured Waters traces the Chenab from its mythic origins to the violence-scarred landscape of Jammu and Kashmir. Along the way, Rana blends memoir, travelogue and keen observation to chart the river in all its complexity. Every bend reveals something new – culture and conflict, memory and myth, power and resistance. The Chenab is also a river of diplomacy, enshrined in the Indus Waters Treaty and entangled in the acrimony of India–Pakistan relations. From Bollywood to bloodshed, spiritual quests to statecraft, the Chenab reflects the many Indias that surge along its banks.
This is no linear chronicle, but a riverine journey – restless, reflective and deeply human.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danesh Rana is an Indian Police Service officer of the AGMUT cadre. He has served for 25 years in different capacities in the three regions of (the erstwhile state of) Jammu and Kashmir. Presently, he is on central deputation with CRPF. His debut novel, Red Maize, won the Tata Literature Live! First book award for fiction in 2015. His second book, a work of non-fiction, As Far as the Saffron Fields: The Pulwama Conspiracy (2022) , is a definitive work on the deadly Pulwama blast of 2019.

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Discussing Assessment Methods in Education

Reading from the book What Did You Ask At School Today? by Kamala Mukunda

Recording Summary - January 30, 2026

Fridays @ EBD focused on discussing assessment methods in education, particularly exploring alternative approaches to traditional testing. The participants, including teachers and students, shared experiences and perspectives on collaborative testing, portfolio assessments, and rubrics. They discussed the challenges and benefits of these methods, including their potential to reduce test anxiety and promote deeper learning. The conversation also touched on emotional health in schools, with participants sharing examples of how their institutions support students’ mental well-being. The conversation ended with a discussion on academic emotions and their impact on learning, emphasising the importance of recognising and addressing students’ emotional states in the educational context.

Paper over Pixels

Ebooks are convenient.

They’re cheaper, lighter, and available in seconds.

Still… they’re just not for me.

I don’t want to read a story on the same device where I check messages, scroll, and get distracted every five minutes. My brain already associates screens with noise and hurry. Reading, for me, is supposed to feel slower than the rest of life. I don’t want to tap or swipe to move through a story. I want to turn a page. There’s something about holding a physical book that makes the experience feel real. The weight of it is in my bag. The quiet sound of pages shifting. The way it doesn’t glow or buzz, just waits for me to open it. And nothing, nothing, beats the smell of a new book.

That soft, inky, papery smell when you open it for the first time. It’s the smell of a story that hasn’t been touched yet. An ebook can give me the words, but it can’t give me that feeling. I also love seeing how far I’ve come just by looking at the pages. The stack of read pages growing thicker on the left, the unread ones getting thinner on the right — it’s such a small thing, but it feels so satisfying. I can see my progress. I can feel the journey in my hands. A percentage bar on a screen just doesn’t hit the same way.

Ebooks store stories, but physical books store memories.

I remember where I was when I read certain books because I can see the exact copy sitting on my shelf. Some have folded corners. Some have lines I underlined when a sentence meant too much. Some still have random receipts or bits of paper tucked inside like little time capsules.

A physical book doesn’t run out of battery. It doesn’t pull me away from the moment. It lets me disconnect from everything else and be fully inside one world at a time.

Reading, to me, isn’t just about finishing a story. It’s about slowing down, being present, and letting a story stay with me even after I close it. Paper makes that possible in a way screens never have.

So no, I don’t do ebooks.

I do smell the new pages.

I do the growing stack of pages on the left.

I do bookmarks, dog-eared corners, and stories I can hold in my hands.

I think you can tell by now…if there are sticky notes and tabs, it means the book understood you — and parts of life you could never quite put into words.

Sneha 

-The English Book Depot