A British era library that tells a hoary tale
100-year-old SMS Club and Library has first prints of several books published in the United Kingdom
The Hindu | 16 Jun 2017 | Giji
K. Raman
From the
outside, it is just another building that sits amid the green expanse of tea
plantations. But inside the SMS Club and Library in Peermade, Idukki, the
visitor will be surprised to find some rare gems in the form of first prints of
books published in the United Kingdom during the days of the British Raj.
It is as though each of
the books, many of them close to 150 years old, breathe the rarefied air of
memory and scholarship from a time increasingly receding into the realm of
forgetfulness. Many books have on them signatures of persons who owned them,
mostly Englishmen and women, perhaps planters, who used to live in the area
before Independence.
The SMS Club and
Library, which turns 100 this year, was started in a building on 35 cents
gifted by former Maharaja of Travancore Sreemoolam Thirunal in 1917. Peermade
hosted the summer palace of the erstwhile Travancore rulers and the building
‘Ammachikottaram’ ( Palace of the Queen) still stands nearby.
According to the records
of the Taluk Library Council, the SMS Club and Library was the second public
library. Today, it is an ‘A’ grade library with a membership of 3,500 and a
collection of some 17,000 titles.
Rare books
Post-independence, the
library, originally housed in a thatched structure, passed into the hands of
local book enthusiasts like Chellappan, a woodcutter by profession, but a great
lover of books. He used to be available at the library every evening to assist
the members.
Besides its collection of
rare English books, the library has a rich collection of Malayalam books, which
can throw light on the evolution of Malayalam literature and printing. Some of
the oldest books are priced in ‘Ana’ (an old coin now not in circulation).
Local lore has it that
the library boasted an original by Raja Ravi Varma, but this could hardly be
verified owing to lapse of time. P.N. Mohanan, who has been associated with the
library for 35 years, says he still recalls the day one of the paintings fell
and its glass cover was broken.
“It was then decided to
keep the painting in the draw of a table. We could not find it later,” he says.
Source | The Hindu | 16 June 2017
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
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Event | MANLIBNET 17th
Annual International Conference on 15-16 September 2017 at Jaipuria, Noida,
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