Book store becomes godown!

Many are not aware of the shop situated behind ESIC

The books in the store of the Kannada and culture department here is languishing due to the apathy of the officials and lack of publicity.

The store promoted by the department to popularise the habit of reading Kannada books and make available good literature to the readers economically is housed in a single, dingy room.

It has only turned into a godown, with accumulated dust over several years. Nobody is aware of the store located on a small gully on second cross in Ashok Nagar behind the office of the employees state insurance corporation.

The books contain valuable literature of the Champu, Vachana, Navodaya, Navya, Pragathisheela, Dalitha, Bandaya, etc eras and movements encompassing all issues including politics.

The writers of the books are all giants in their own right like Pampa, Ranna, Janna, Basavanna, Akkamahadevi, B M Srikantaiah, Thi Nam Sri, Mahatma Gandhi, B R Ambedkar, Kuvempu, K S Narasimhaswamy, D V Gundappa, Triveni, Pu Thi Narasimhachar, U R Ananthamurthy, G S Shivarudrappa, Gopalakrishna Adiga and S Nijalingappa.

 New books are added to the store with almost nil sales as people are not aware of the facility available to good books at reasonable discounted rates.

A majority of the books have become food for silver fish and termites and decomposing. The authorities concerned have not even cared to dust the books once in a year.