The Enchanted Room: Remembering Childhood Libraries
SWAHA, CUTTACK, 1990s
In the small, sleepy town of Cuttack, summer is long. Too long or so they say. The sun glares down at you, the sweat sticks to your skin and there is little you can do outside. I don’t remember the heat so much because I escaped into a different world through books.
Growing up in a joint family with 20 members at any given point and more in a state of influx, I craved a space for myself, for my dreams to soar. They did – through the hundreds of books I borrowed from my school library and the personal collection of my father’s cousin. When I was in the middle of a book, I became anti-social - at least my mother complained that I did. Time, space and people did not matter.
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