JOIN USWords create us as much as we create them. Take the world of social media and blogging where we are what people read about us. We’re defined by the words we use, and the words others use about us. In an age of fox-trotting attention spans, perception paints us, and thus we change every day of our lives.
They’re lifetime companions, words. Invasive, organic creatures. They reach you without notice, and then they begin to grow within you. As you go through life picking up and savouring experiences, these words adapt and transcend, they nurture and bend. You find the meanings of words changing as you grow older.
But, once upon a time, words were gentler. Yes, there was a time before this wild, weird dance of words began. Long before the sheen and instant availability, the media-mixes and portability, the amputation of words in text messages. There was a time when words could breathe. They were found mostly in books, and books were available in a treasure trove called the library. Where the air was as important as the reason for going there.
Long before Google played links on our mind, taking us from one searched word to its 100 streaming implications, we were already naturally wired up for meaning — literal, literary, evocative, spiritual, and all the rest of it. With interest and time, we could single-handedly do what’s being done for us today by all these machines and their artificial intelligence. A single word, or a combination of words. It could play orchestras in our mind, stage operas and build castles. And it all happened within our head, without the aid of computers, smartphones or bizarre VR gizmos strung about our head. Because our lives and minds were less cluttered and there was ample room for these orchestras, these operas to perform. And long before Google, the Wikis and other quickies, the one-stop destination where words built worlds for us was the library.
I was trying to remember my first encounter with a library. In my first school (a convent school where they disallowed boys after my 5th standard), I don’t think I ever saw a library. I called my friend today, a classmate from then, to ask about this curious absence. Madhavan, a respected corporate advocate now, tells me: “At that age, where did we think of libraries! We wouldn’t have gone there even if they had one. I remember the canteen, the chapel and the classrooms, that’s all!” It’s true, I think, we were in no great hurry to grow up.
But things changed from the next school onwards. Libraries became compulsory, and then compelling. Forced to go there at first, we were soon finding it difficult to keep away. Little red stubs (I almost said stumps, because they were actually thick little papered-over cardboard pieces) served as library cards. We were proud owners of these tokens of scholarship, and the early readers among us treated fresh new books with their fresh new smells like new-found lovers, caressing, inhaling and waiting for the moment we’d be alone together.
School of wonder
At first I was lured by pictures, and then the magic of words that painted even more wondrous pictures. Masters who supervised our library attendance were usually helpful and quite predictable when it came to pointing out books, but a couple of them left us to ourselves, and that’s the thing to do in libraries. (The first time I took my son to a library, he was surprised when I let him choose his own books. Those were the days of the newly evolved hands-on parent. But I remembered my own childhood, and how my love affair with books had begun.)
I remember the excitement of finding a book that appealed to me and taking it home. I was a rather lonely boy. Books enriched my loneliness.
But we grow up even more. Libraries have books and, well, they have corners. Darkish, quietish, well-deserved corners, an ideal retreat after a hard day’s classwork!
It’s been the refrain. In high school, college, and later during my working days in Bombay. Why would anyone meet anyone in a library for conversation, for god’s sake! But, that’s how it was. Those days, I don’t know if the chicken or egg came first, the conversation or the books, whether the actual reason I was in the library was to meet someone or to read. Anyway, this is how it went: Meet me in the library...
This doesn’t mean the library was solely a den for romantic rendezvous. There were many intellectual debates, poems were created, plans for events hatched, and even a play discussed together with half its cast. Despite pointed sighs and narrowed eyes from some young users, no one in authority stopped us from speaking, though I often felt a collective reprimand in the silence of the books.
Libraries had atmosphere. Apart from the walls of magnificently ageing books and the general aura of scholarship and secrecy, each library had its own ‘feel’. That’s probably a bigger reason than its armoury of books, getting us to return again and again. Whispering in the rarefied, dim-lit womb of a library is an iconic image, but I’ve rarely encountered shushing librarians. As a boy I was fascinated by visits to the Madras Literary Society, a large old library with several levels of books against the walls. My mother was in some committee there, and also borrowed books regularly. Today, I hear the place is experiencing bouts of loneliness and a general lack of maintenance.
I often wish my laziness would disregard my Kindle and the books I do buy, allowing me to take myself to a library. But where are those libraries with a ‘feel’? I see so many people coming to bookstores and reading there, maybe trying to recreate the feel of a library. Even the British Council and American libraries are too sleek and too ‘finished’ to grant me that feel. I crave to return to those old libraries without the dust and mildew they’ve accumulated. I mean, the musty smell and the scent of old books have always been a lure, but not this sad stench of neglect.
I sometimes think it’s just a memory I’m chasing.
Travelling in Kerala in my youth, I was fascinated by the reading rooms in towns and villages, where politics was discussed and the literary profile of the state was shaped. I also discovered that while books in many languages have been translated into Malayalam, not as many Malayalam books are translated into other languages. A couple of days ago, I asked my wife’s uncle about these places. A staunch RSS worker at 80-plus, he rued the petty party politics even in these pristine places. “Not finding our newspaper in our local reading room, I brought a copy and placed it on the shelves. By evening someone had removed it. Those in power in the Municipality or Panchayat will see only their periodicals are available, and not others!” he said.
In Kerala, I’ve also found unopened lofts in old homes with hundreds of palm-leaf manuscripts. Besides literature, there’s an abundance of ayurvedic treatises, including traditional remedies for snake bite. Some of them have since been donated to government departments, but much of it ends up as food for white ants.
I, me & my books
Libraries in homes actually presented an even more attractive alternative to me, because I could be myself. The only possible disadvantages are the absence of other people and the obvious limitations of number and variety. Since neither of these was a serious setback as far as I was concerned, I rummaged through my own home and the homes of relatives and friends, and took time off to read. I wasn’t too comfortable with borrowing from people I knew because of the dread of perhaps losing a book and facing the owner’s disappointment. For a long time, I discouraged people from borrowing my books as well, until I realised that, except for rare or author-signed books, books can always be bought, and that gifting books can bring deep contentment. I’ve been responsible for a couple of libraries coming up, and the pleasure of that is something else.
If, after all this, you were to ask me which is the library that gave me the most pleasure, I must sadly reply it’s one that doesn’t exist now. There was a library in my grandmother’s house in Bengaluru. And this is where I used to sleep. You can imagine my excitement each time a trip to Bengaluru was announced. Most of three walls were filled with books. The fourth wall had a series of large windows. I read scores of books here, and also wrote many stories. Reading and writing late into the night was routine.
The room had one or two large paintings. One of them was of a girl lying in a garden, chin cupped in her palm, gazing dreamily at a lotus pond. Needless to say, I fell in love with her. I spent hours in her company while my cousin was racing bikes and others were climbing trees or going out with their parents. I always felt she made those books come alive.