All through this turbulent winter in India, I have been reading in a way that has grown familiar. If you are a reader, you know the reflex. First, you read the headlines as one democracy after another plunges into troubled waters: Brexit in the UK, a high-stakes election in the US, a season of citizenship protests and violence in my country.

Then, instinctively, you reach for books — from the essays of James Baldwin to the letters of Jawaharlal Nehru or Mahatma Gandhi; the words of Martin Luther King on civil liberties or Rebecca Solnit on the power of protest; Victor Klemperer’s diaries of Germany under the Reich or the plays in which great Indian writer Mahasweta Devi charts the cost of speaking truth to power.

What I’m seeking is not comfort or solace, though both can be found along the way. Instead, reading in this fashion provides a compass, fellowship and necessary hope in times of uncertainty.