New Delhi, May 21 -- to learn, to escape, to fill quiet moments. But rarely do we stop and ask what a book should truly do to us.

Franz Kafka had a clear answer.

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

Kafka didn't write that line as a compliment to literature. He wrote it as a demand.

Most of us read for comfort, for information, for something to do on a long commute. But Kafka believed that kind of reading barely scratches the surface. A truly meaningful book, he argued, should do something far more unsettling; it should crack you open.

Think about how much people carry without ever saying. Grief that never fully surfaced. Fears that were quietly buried under routine. Anger, insecurity, longing; emotions that daily l...