BOYS DON’T CRY is more than a book. It’s a true-life story with a clincher of an ending that every woman deserves. It’s a rule book that guides girls on matters of the heart and head. It’s a peek into the closed doors of a modern Indian marriage, of the kind of husband no man should become. It’s a beacon to acknowledge your illness and seek help, and NOT drag an innocent partner into your dark world. It’s a conversation on mental health that every family should have.

It’s the story of 15 years of life. A story that took eight years for the author Meghna Pant to gather the courage to write.

Published by Penguin Random House earlier this year, the book was launched at the prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival. It was on many bestseller lists and endorsed by biggies like Shobhaa De. It has also been picked up for a film adaptation by Pocket Aces’ Dice Media, India’s largest digital entertainment company.

Since October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, let me know if you’d like to discuss the book, and take the conversation forward to young girls on how to recognise and fight abuse, thus empowering themselves.

UNPARENTING is not a book about raising perfect, well behaved children. Rather, it is a book that guides us to raise children in a way that leaves them free express themselves as authentic individuals who have the freedom to ask uncomfortable questions. The book takes us back in time to unlearn parental love as the freedom to punish and care at whim and without control so we can love our children as they are, and not how we want them to be.

Reema Ahmad’s own experiences of childhood sexual abuse, suicide attempts, an abusive marriage, single parenthood and her work as a counsellor all go into the book, creating an engaging dialogue on generational trauma and effective ways to break out of it. In a way the book is a friendly guide not just for parents but also for anyone who wants to be a parent or cares for children and doesn’t want to pass on the grief, shame and anger they experienced in their childhood. The book provides easy answers to difficult questions on puberty, sexuality, bullying, body safety, relationships and death that parents often struggle to explore with their children.

Released in September 2022, the book has already gone in reprint and has been featured in The Friday Times, The Sunday Herald, She The People tv, The Print and Scroll. It also made it to number 29 on the W H Smith list of non fiction books of the year within a week of its release.