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Journalism of Courage
Visit the Kamala Nehru Park in Pune’s Kothrud on a Saturday morning, and you will come across a pleasant scene: young people sitting on the grass, on the benches, or under the trees, engrossed in reading books. They are part of an open silent-reading community, called Pune Reads, that has gathered at the park every Saturday, from 8 am to 11 am, for the past two years. Their motto: ‘No registration. Just bring a mat and a book.’
Aditi Chauhan, Sonal Dharmadhikari, and Aditi Kapadi started the community in May 2023 after being inspired by Cubbon Reads, a similar popular initiative in Bangalore. “I had been to Bangalore and to Cubbon Reads where I saw people getting together, not really talking, but just sitting silently and reading. I realised that that is such a simple yet very rare thing to do,” says Chauhan, a 25-year-old software engineer.
Chauhan and Dharmadhikari, a 35-year-old writer who has worked in advertising and AI, both separately reached out to the curators of Cubbon Reads and set up the Pune version. Since then, the Pune Reads Instagram page has amassed over 5,000 followers and a bunch of regular readers who show up every weekend.
“There is no registration or fee, nothing like that,” says Dharmadhikari. “The core idea is to encourage people to get in the habit of reading again. There are some who have always been readers, but they could not find the time, or they had fallen out of the habit. And some others wanted to get into the habit, but then they did not know where to start,” she adds.
“We just don’t have the kind of motivation or support that you get when you see people around you reading. Most of us got it through school or college, where we saw people reading. Some people have not had that luxury, or just have not had that connection. What we wanted to create was not a physical space but a social space where you know that the other person is reading on their own, so you can do it as well,” she further explains.
Ninad Tengse, 25, moved to Pune for his software job in 2023 and was looking for communities to meet people. He became a regular at Pune Reads and was eventually asked to be a curator. On how the community helps a reader, he says, “You are making conscious efforts to set aside a time of your day for this activity that is reading. And in this day and age, it becomes important that we do that. Because at home, that is simply not possible unless you have extreme discipline. There are a lot of other responsibilities at home that do not simply allow you the continuous time that you need for an activity like reading. Because reading is not a 30-second job. So, this allows the reader to just set aside some time and have undisturbed time for reading.”
Most of the readers joining the community are in the 19 to 30 age group, but the curators aim to expand the demographic.
“We are an offline reading community, but the face of it is on Instagram. The regular updates go on Instagram, and the younger generation gets to know about it. But it should be ‘reading for everyone’. The younger generation and the older generation, all of whom want to take up reading as a habit. We encourage people to bring along their families,” Dharmadhikari adds.
