Journalism of Courage
There is a companionable silence that fills the reading room at the East Street library The Albert Edward Institute and Cowasji Wadia Hall and Library as students,pensioners and book lovers pore over voluminous tomes,newspapers and magazines. It is drizzling outside,but the motley crowd is unaware of the pleasant weather,engrossed in the world of words. This is not new to the library. For over 135 years,the scene has been quite the same.
With the market flooded with smaller,leaner and faster reading devices,one wonders about the future of these cozy neighbourhood libraries. E-books were introduced in India around two years ago,and many readers are wondering if the era of physical books is drawing to a close. E-book,the downloadable format of texts,is read on portable tablet computers such as iPad or dedicated e-book readers such as Kindle,Nook or Kobo. Hundreds of tomes can fit into the digital bookshelves of a tablet or an e-reader,and one can sift through F. Scott Fitzgerald,Jane Austen or comic books any time of the day and at any place.
But the libraries in Pune are insisting that the real reader wants a space where he can get lost amid books. Swami Yoganathananda,who has been working in the library at the Ramkrishna Math near Dandekar bridge for almost a decade,says the place is frequented by youngsters interested in reading about spirituality,religion and philosophy. There are some books and subjects of which not enough information is available on the internet, he says. The library was started in 1984 and boasts of over 15,000 books,ranging from subjects such as spirituality,biographies and several fiction and non-fiction titles in English,Marathi,Hindi and Sanskrit.
While many readers say that the look,touch and smell of books attracts them to libraries,others say that contrary to the popular belief,important and rare volumes on particular subjects are not available on the internet. NA Choudhary,who has been working with the library inside the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics for almost 25 years now,explains that the library,which has one of the largest collections of social science documents in India,caters to the needs of scholars,academicians,policy makers and students interested in subjects related to social sciences.
One of the important aspects of our library is that we take really good care of our books. Since we have a number of rare volumes,we make sure that the members who borrow the books handle them with extreme care. We have regular members who have purchased a life membership,who pay the fees on an annual basis,and there are others who prefer to do so on a day-to-day basis, he says.
Far from struggling for members,Friends Library in Kondhwa is flourishing to the point that they are going to open another branch in Undri. Started over 20 years ago by educator Alka Kanetkar Tejuja,the friendly establishment boasts over 30,000 books on a wide range of topics from politics,history,general knowledge,technology and management,to fiction and non-fiction sections. It has over 2,000 members.
Mihir Somik,a sociology student from Pune University and an avid reader,describes how spending an entire day in the reading room of a neighbourhood library can never become archaic. Spending long holiday hours at his favourite library in Sanghvi,he says,One of the most amazing experiences I have had was at a library in Lucknow where I came across an anonymous funny synopsis inside a Jackie Collins novel. That personal contact is something I have been looking for ever since. There is something about picking up a volume at random and diving into it.
