Hyderabad, April 29 -- On a quiet weekend in Hyderabad, a living room fills up, not for a party but for a book discussion. A few kilometres away, a mother is swapping her child's screen time for a Roald Dahl book. In the affluent Jubilee Hills, a reader walks into a bookstore, lingering between shelves, taking in the smell of fresh books.

Something is shifting in the city- Hyderabad is reading again. And this time, the movement is being shaped, sustained and quietly led by women.

Rebuilding what was lost

When sisters Sapna and Shilpa Sudhakar opened Luna Bookstore in Jubilee Hills in 2022, they were chasing a ghost.

"Growing up in the 90s, there were several bookshops in the city that we used to go to all the time, but they all c...