Words Apart: An educationist’s lesson in language
THERE ARE BOOKS that teach. There are books that enchant. And then there are those rare books that alter the way we think. 100 Wow Words by Sumita Chandani Rekhi belongs firmly in that last category.
Calling it merely a vocabulary book is like calling a raga a sequence of notes. 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 refined that gift.
Today, she wears many identities with grace. She is an educationist devoted to creating learning experiences and mentoring teachers in a school serving an underprivileged community. She is a sculptor who chisels away the unnecessary, an artist who sees colour where others see blankness, and a singer who knows every memorable word has rhythm before meaning. Above all, she is a deeply compassionate human being whose generosity informs everything she creates.
Long before 100 Wow Words, she published It’s Not Me, a beautiful medley of prose and poetry that slips between fiction and autobiography until the distinction becomes irrelevant. Few books have moved me. It is lyrical without being sentimental, intimate without becoming indulgent, and courageous without announcing its courage. Reading it, I realised Sumita does not merely understand words; she inhabits them. That same sensibility breathes through this book.
The genius of 100 Wow Words lies not merely in its vocabulary, though 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. She builds tiny worlds around every word, and the reader begins to own the language rather than borrow it.
Education disguised as entertainment.
That disguise matters. Too many books designed to improve vocabulary feel like examinations. 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 rooted in storytelling.
The book arrives when language is under siege. We communicate in abbreviations, emojis and hurried fragments. Nuance is sacrificed at the altar of speed. Rekhi reminds us 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—for 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 final page, I found myself wishing another hundred waited beyond it. Not because the book feels incomplete, but because spending time inside Sumita’s imaginative classroom is pleasurable. She leaves you wanting the lesson to continue.
That 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 restoring wonder to language. Words are not merely tools of communication. They are bridges between strangers, companions in solitude, instruments of thought and, in the hands of a true poet, small acts of grace.
Read it for its words.
Keep it for the world of possibility those words quietly unlock.