5 min readAug 7, 2026 07:20 PM IST
First published on: Aug 7, 2026 at 07:20 PM IST
There are books that teach. There are books that delight. And then there are those rare books that quietly alter the way we think. 100 Wow Words by Sumita Chandani Rekhi belongs firmly in that last category.
On its face, this is a book about vocabulary. But to describe it merely as a vocabulary book would be rather like calling a raga a sequence of notes or a sculpture a collection of stone. It misses the point entirely.
I have known Sumita since our school days. Even then there was something quietly incandescent about her. She possessed the rare ability to make learning feel less like instruction and more like discovery. Time has only refined that gift.
Today she wears many identities with effortless grace. She is an educationist who has devoted herself to creating joyful learning experiences and to mentoring teachers who nurture children in a school serving an underprivileged community. She is a sculptor who understands that beauty often emerges by chiselling away the unnecessary. She is an artist who sees colour where others see blankness. She is a singer who understands that every memorable word has rhythm before it has meaning. And she is, above all, a deeply compassionate human being whose generosity quietly informs everything she creates.
Long before 100 Wow Words, she published It’s Not Me, a hauntingly beautiful medley of prose and poetry that slips effortlessly between fiction and autobiography until the distinction itself becomes irrelevant. Few books have moved me as profoundly. It is lyrical without being sentimental, intimate without becoming indulgent, and courageous without announcing its courage. Reading it, I realised that Sumita does not merely understand words; she inhabits them. That same poetic sensibility breathes through every page of this new book.
The genius of 100 Wow Words lies not in the selection of vocabulary, although the choices are excellent, but in the way each word is transformed into an experience. Rekhi understands something most educational books forget: memory is emotional before it is intellectual. We remember stories long after we forget definitions. So she builds tiny worlds around every word, creating playful associations that settle naturally into the mind. Without quite noticing it, the reader begins to own the language rather than merely borrow it.
This is education disguised as entertainment. That disguise matters.
Too many books designed to improve vocabulary feel like examinations waiting to happen. They burden readers with lists to memorise and meanings to reproduce. Rekhi moves in the opposite direction. She replaces anxiety with curiosity, repetition with imagination, and obligation with delight. It is an approach that feels remarkably contemporary while being rooted in one of humanity’s oldest teaching traditions: storytelling.
The book also arrives at a time when language itself is under siege. We communicate in abbreviations, emojis and hurried fragments. Nuance is sacrificed at the altar of speed. Rich vocabularies are increasingly mistaken for pretension rather than precision. Rekhi gently reminds us that language is not about sounding superior. It is about thinking more clearly, feeling more deeply and expressing ourselves with greater honesty.
That may be the book’s greatest achievement. It never mistakes difficult words for intelligent writing. Instead, it teaches that the right word, however simple or sophisticated, is an act of respect—towards the listener, the reader and the thought itself.
If I have one criticism, it is also the highest compliment I can pay. One hundred words simply aren’t enough. By the time I reached the final page, I found myself wishing there were another hundred waiting just beyond it. Not because the book feels incomplete, but because spending time inside Sumita’s imaginative classroom is unexpectedly pleasurable. She leaves you wanting the lesson to continue.
That, perhaps, is the finest measure of any educationist. Good teachers answer questions. Exceptional educationists awaken curiosity.
The rarest among them make us fall in love with learning itself.
With 100 Wow Words, Sumita Chandani Rekhi has done precisely that. She has written a book that expands vocabulary almost as a happy accident. Its real achievement is larger. It restores wonder to language. It reminds us that words are not merely tools with which we communicate. They are bridges between strangers, companions in solitude, instruments of thought, and, in the hands of a true poet, small acts of grace.
Read this book for its words. Keep it for the world of possibility those words quietly unlock.
Sumita Chandani Rekhi's 100 Wow Words. (Generated using AI) 
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