Axis

A reflective essay Photo: Nijugrapher Libraries used to be the record keepers of the past. They were expected to be slightly antiquated because they were meant to enable us to retreat, to discover something recorded and make sense of it in the present. The atmosphere was a collusion of many lives and millions of ideas living in a confined space. There was the air of expectancy but also of the need to linger, to seek at length and to dwell on what was discovered.   Today there is a subtle pressure on libraries to be spaces of the future.  Open, bright, airy. Chrome and glass are considered fitting materials and an absence of clutter is modernist. Time is critical and the faster you find something the seemingly more efficient the library system appears to be.   S...

I come from a place and a time where the experience of seeking books was a mixed one. On the one hand, I met the last representatives of a generation for whom the public library was of tremendous significance. Some of these people had even collaborated to set up the first public libraries in my part of the world. On the other, I grew up at a time when reading had been compartmentalized into syllabi and mandated material, and books (read: textbooks) were keys to employment. Within my own generation, public libraries withered away. My school encouraged borrowing from the library, and in my neighbourhood was the biggest library in the Northeast, so these were valuable resources for me. We also had, in our city, a rare bird — the only library meant exclusively for children. It had children’...

In the age of the digital when most reading is done off the screen, the sensory appeal of paper as the reading material has its own charm. A room full of books plays on our senses in so many ways. The smell, texture and rustle of paper draws any ardent reader into an immersion that is not worthy of any comparison with reading off a screen. Ask any voracious reader and she will say that we all prefer paper. Possessing books is as valuable for readers as collecting jewelry is for many. My father Ziaul Haq is one such person. He has a vast personal collection of books that he has slowly nurtured and built over a period of seventy years. At 97 years of age, he sits proudly amongst the books he loves so much. Allahabad, the city where he resides had the reputation of being a hub of the li...

Dear Torchlighters, Technology is everywhere. Inventions that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago are essential components of everyday life now. Libraries and readers too have been swept up in its all-encompassing embrace; Kindle screens wink at us from bedside tables, archives become digitally available, and writers tweet out stories in real time to a breathless audience of millions. As with all other change, this too has its share of nay-sayers. Some worries and complaints – about elitism and privilege, shortened attention spans and lost nuances, digital isolation – are entirely legitimate and, to varying degrees, already apparent. The need of the hour seems to be platforms where a multiplicity of voices from all walks of life can think through, at some leisure, the ramif...