Book space

Three friends — Vibha Kamat,Sonal Bimal and Vaishali Shende — had brought about the much-needed change to infuse the reading habit in children. The library,located on the ground floor of Princess building,will now be an exclusive space for children.

The trio,belonging to different backgrounds,has one thing in common — a craze for books. “As a kid,I never cared what the book looked like; if it was newly bound or in a tattered condition. I would just pick them up and start reading them feverishly,” says Vaishali,who freelances with a NGO on disaster management.

Just two months into the project,the library is already home to as many as 2,500 books. “The count is rising by the day. We just received another bunch of 50 books,” adds Sonal,an apparel consultant. The library,they say,is not just the creation of three people coming together and pulling in a few more adults. “Kids have shown equal participation in our venture. It’s heartening to see a child come up and donate his/her books to us. Many children have given us their prized possessions,” Sonal says.

The three are concerned about the funds. “We have space for a few thousand more books. Help and support have been pouring in,but we need funds to sustain the project,” says Vibha,a French teacher.

Maharashtra Mitra Mandal had entered into a contract with the BMC in 2003 to run a library for 30 years,but it had not really made a breakthrough. “I had been scouring for some space to set up a library for a long time. When I visited this space,I knew this was it,” Vibha beams. The trio also plans to have a space for movie screening. “Would not it be fun for kids to know how Charlie’s chocolate factory actually looks like? We plan to have an informative and intellect-stimulating film library too,” Sonal says.