Sparkling Mirrors: Stories of Habits that Shaped a Nation

By: Col Alok Asthana

Sparkling Mirrors is a collection of twenty-four short, lived-in reflections on contemporary Indian society - its politics, its civic habits, its moral shortcuts, and its collective talent for self-deception.

Each piece begins with an ordinary incident in the life of a fictional Colonel - nothing dramatic, nothing heroic - and ends with an unsettling recognition. The humour is quiet, the satire restrained, the conclusions deliberately unannounced.

These are not stories about power, but about how power is tolerated. Not about villains, but about comfort. Not about ideology, but about the small habits of mind that allow inconvenient truths to be ignored.

Written with elegance rather than anger, Sparkling Mirrors offers readers something increasingly rare: the permission to doubt without shouting, to disagree without declaring allegiance, and to look steadily at a society that prefers applause to reflection.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GMS19VCG
• ISBN13: 9798902968955
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Length: 146 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"