Repositories of life
Not
having many public libraries could translate into losing writers in search of
knowledge, nurturing and solace
In 1998, when I first came to Delhi for my
Master’s in international studies, one of the first things I did was take
membership of the American Center Library (ACL) and the British Council Library
(BCL). Because it was incredibly hot, and we only had ceiling fans in the
hostel, we called ACL the “air-conditioned library”, and because that is as far
as our sense of humour stretched, BCL was the “bear-conditioned library”.
Since the hostel rooms were limited — a
problem that continues to plague India’s public universities today — I ended up
waiting for the second list of room allotments. In the meanwhile I bunked over
with a friend. There was no real room to study — barely enough to sleep, to be
honest — so I ended up with a pile of books in the cafeteria, reading away.
It was only many months later that some
classmates told me how much it freaked them out that I was reading for the sake
of learning. They were there to get a degree, maybe to prepare for the civil
service exams, and land a job. Learning anything was entirely incidental to the
process.
For me, though, books were freedom. I had
spent three years getting a degree at a Hindi-medium college where — when I
finished the course — the guy handing out the final mark sheet said, “Three
years? What was the hurry?” A number of my classmates had managed to get jobs,
but mostly as support staff to the many wannabe mafia dons who survived off the
railway contracts business in Gorakhpur, my hometown. This was the downside of
Gorakhpur being one of the largest railway hubs in India. The upside was the
library, where I could escape into other worlds. My poor college had only a few
dozen books in its library — all study material, nothing to feed hopes or
dreams, merely rote learning that would make you end up hating books even if
you were inclined to like them.
In Delhi, ACL and BCL were dreamlike in terms
of what they offered. As a child I had attended schools with well-stocked
libraries. It had allowed a non-native English speaker like me to catch up and
then surpass my classmates for whom it was the first language. In a sense,
then, libraries had been my allies and friends at times when I had few, or
none, and so it was good to have access to them.
The thing is that ACL and BCL are paid
libraries. You can go to Teen Murti and consult the books, and there are other
academic libraries here or there, but they are generally for the better-off. In
2006, I experienced a different set of libraries — in London, where I spent a
year after having finished my first novel, researching a book I still have to
write, and broke, living off loans and the kindness of friends and family.
During that time, especially when a job opportunity had slipped through my
fingers, or I had bad news from a publisher, I frequented public libraries in
different parts of the city.
The Westminster Reference Library, behind the
National Gallery of Art in central London, tended to be inhabited by an odd
assortment of people. Quite often a homeless person would wander in and spend
time, the layers of clothing cloaking him (almost always a man) in an aura of
indescribable smells. I still associate the smell of the homeless with that
library, and that smell is intertwined in the plot lines of the books I
discovered and read there.
In Sutton, Surrey, the library was new and
beautiful. It was there that I read the works of Neal Stephenson, grand
cyberpunk novels, and his The Baroque Cycle, which tells an alternative
history of the rise of computing in the world. In Lambeth Libraries, off
Clapham, I discovered a biography called The Orientalist, of the
novelist Lev Nussimbaum, also known as Essad Bey and Kurban Said, a writer who
managed to escape Stalin, but not the Nazis and the Fascists.
In India, I often wonder, if I were broke,
looking for a job, researching a book, which free libraries would nurture me?
Could I freely consume knowledge, could I refresh myself from the stories — both
true and fantastical — that the world had, or would I be left with no real
options? I fear the latter. I was lucky. I consumed literature, and used that
to write books of my own. I wonder how many writers we lose because we do not
have similar libraries to sustain them.
Link | http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/talk/libraries-repositories-of-life/article9557424.ece
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
No comments:
Post a Comment