Author: Aravinda Anantharaman and Samina Mishra

Aravinda is a writer from Bangalore who credits books, libraries, and bookish folks with being a huge influence on her life. Samina Mishra makes films, writes and teaches. She has a special interest in media for and about children. Among her many loves is bookish love and while she recognizes that technology is changing the form of the book, she hopes the smell of books will always be around. Samina and Aravinda are co-editors of this issue of Torchlight.
<i>Preface to </i><strong>Issue 8 </strong>
Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Preface to Issue 8

This issue’s theme, Libraries: Personal and Communal, comes from the experiences of people we like to see as part of the growing Torchlight tribe – people who have sought to work with books, libraries, and reading because of how it has enriched their lives. Many have expanded this deeply personal engagement to inhabit a larger space, to grow a community in. Torchlight itself is such an endeavor and so we felt, it is worth asking the question: What drives this desire to share this love, almost compulsively, and what comes from it? The resultant stories are about libraries, rules, aspirations, indulgences – and all the intersections between personal love and public spaces.   In Spotlight, we focus on personal love in Neha Yadav’s Fifteen Copies and Counting, a story about the several ...