Issue 11 – October 2019

30Jan

By Torchlight TeamNo Comments

Issue 10 – July 2019, Issue 11 – October 2019, Issue 12 – February 2020, Issue 2 - June 2017, Issue 3 - September 2017, Issue 4 – January 2018, Issue 5 – April 2018, Issue 6 – July 2018, Issue 7 – October 2018, Issue 8 – January 2019, Issue 9 – April 2019

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Call for Contributions to Torchlight Issue 13, April 2020: Libraries, Reading and Resistance The year 2020 is seeing catastrophes unfold across the world- with violent political instability, economic collapse, and unprecedented environmental crises unfolding everywhere, while a new-media driven frenzy of dystopian narratives are shaping public discourse. Yet history has shown us- as much as contemporary times are doing- that libraries, books, and communities of story-tellers and story-keepers everywhere, have persisted in the face of dire odds to preserve alternative narratives – of solidarity, hopefulness, critical thought, emotional fulfilment - and resisted oppression in myriad ways. In this context, Torchlight: A Journal of Libraries and Bookish Love invites your contributions for ...

<i>Preface to Issue 11: </i><strong>Libraries in Film and Literature</strong>

29Oct

By Torchlight TeamNo Comments

Issue 11 – October 2019

Preface to Issue 11: Libraries in Film and Literature

We set out to explore Libraries (and Bookish Love) in Film and Literature with our 11th Issue. Our Torchlight Spotlight shines on an essay by Dr Maxine Berntsen that provokes us to think about the privilege of learning to read, the responsibility of asking questions around what we read and about relationships. The act of reading is artfully picked up and strengthened by Saumyananda Sahi in ‘Travels with an open book on my lap’ which transports us into film and text plots around reading where the language is understood as ‘a form of life’. At this Spotlight, we also read Venita Coelho who straddles both forms by writing novels as well as scripts and what this line stepping means to her creative self that adds to bookish love. In Chiaroscuro, we welcome Jaya Modi a young designer who respon...

<i>Reframing the </i><strong>Narrative of Illiteracy</strong>

27Oct

By Maxine Berntsen2 Comments

Issue 11 – October 2019, Spotlight

Reframing the Narrative of Illiteracy

With thanks to Dr Manjiri Nimbkar and Mr Kishore Darak for first bringing this text to my notice and their comments on the discrepancies between the original text and its adaptation for the Balbharati text book. Introduction Illustration: Datta Ahiwale Throughout the years, the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Research — popularly known as Balbharati – has made efforts to present a range of social and personal diversity in its books. In its 1994 edition of the Marathi textbook for standard six, it included a chapter from Taral Antaral, the autobiography of Shankarrao Kharat (1921-2001), one of the earliest and most distinguished of Dalit writers and academics in Maharashtra. A law graduate, Kharat was a close associate of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, and a convert to Budd...

<i>Travels with an </i><strong>open book</strong><i> on my lap</i>

27Oct

By Saumyananda Sahi1 Comment

Issue 11 – October 2019, Spotlight

Travels with an open book on my lap

1. View of clouds from an Air Plane | 2. ‘Compartment C Car 293’ by Edward Hopper I am half asleep while cruising at 35,000 feet above the earth’s crust at a speed of 920 kilometers per hour. On my lap is Bruce Chatwin’s ‘Anatomy of Restlessness’, with my finger marking my progress. There is a slight chill from the air-conditioning, and I am lulled by that special calm of being alone among many, and of traveling while sitting still. I hear the sound of someone else turning a page. Looking across at a clean-shaven man in his 40s holding a paperback with gem-stone studded fingers, I search his face for hints of what he might be reading... is it a murder mystery involving identical twins? Or the story of a family struggling to survive through a global epidemic? Or is he reading ti...

27Oct

By Venita CoelhoNo Comments

Issue 11 – October 2019, Spotlight

Image and Word

Every story of mine starts as a series of images flickering on an internal screen. All of Me began with the image of a boy lost and alone in the dark, talking to the darkness and listening to the multiple voices that spoke back. A story in Washer of the Dead condensed around the image of hanks of hair flying in the dusk air above the roofs of an ancient city. Whisper in the Wind started with the image of a crumbling wall, cracks stuffed with papers that flew free in the wind like sudden butterflies. Image courtesy: Times of India As I tease at the meaning of the images a story begins to form around them. I take long walks through the beautiful village of Moira and the story grows with each step. It could end up as a screenplay or a book. The choice is never mine. Each story comes with a ...

<strong>The Librarian</strong><i> in Picture Books</i>

26Oct

By Jewel, Anandita and Sujata1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

The Librarian in Picture Books

An exploratory exercise on Librarian-based illustrations in Picture Books By Jewel Gomes, Anandita Rao and Sujata Noronha For most of us who work at Bookworm, a library-based organisation, the library is our universe. From reading other research on the library as a place and the place of the library in literature we have been thinking and seeking more understanding around this construct to both understand ourselves and our work but to also look at how positioning these pieces of literature on our library shelves can impact our readers. We are also curious in trying to understand how the place of the library has been changing and if literature records these shifts. In books for middle school and older, we are quite easily able to talk about how the library is positioned in say J.K Rowli...

<strong>Lost and Found in Adaptation</strong><br /><i>Of bookish love and film</i>

26Oct

By Merle AlmeidaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

Lost and Found in Adaptation
Of bookish love and film

Being of a generation that found joy, release, longing, belonging and mercy in books, I sniff around this subject warily, fully aware of my bias for story on the written page. Oral storytelling comes close, but hits different spots. We hold on to books for dear life, not just to the stories within but to their form, as familiar and different as a lover on different days—the smell of the spine, sometimes calling up a darkened room with its knot of anticipation, othertimes a whiff of peeling teflon; and always, the weightlessness of the pages, crackling with possibility or clammy with rains past, begging to disengage and disgorge. Despite that bias, plus a too-slim repertoire of films watched, especially adaptations, I am intrigued by the subject Torchlight has put before me: bookish love ...

<i>Some images of</i><strong> shame and pride</strong> <i>around</i><strong> literacy and illiteracy</strong>

26Oct

By Jane Sahi1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

Some images of shame and pride around literacy and illiteracy

Illustration: Alia Sinha “You ask yourself, have I got a name if I can’t write it? Am I a human being if I can’t read it? You turn to stone ...” Stanley has just lost his job once again on account of being unable to read or write and here he is confiding in Iris, a feisty and fiercely independent working woman who later helps him to learn to read. Stanley and Iris is a Hollywood adaptation (or re-scripting) of Pat Barker’s unsentimental book called Union Street which is about the resilient lives of working class women in the 1950s in England. The film has a very different tone and focus from the book by making the main plot about Stanley becoming literate. It reinforces certain stereotypes that are associated with illiteracy and the magical transformation that is apparently brought about...

<i>On the Same </i><strong>Page</strong>

26Oct

By Beena Choksi1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

On the Same Page

An Unfettered Right Being able to criss-cross the globe on the strength of the Internet has made it possible to engage with creative ideas, conversations, and experiences which otherwise would be beyond our reach—and at times, even beyond our imagination. On The Same Page will bring to the reader of Torchlight, a combination of textual-audio-visual curated content, about and around libraries and bookish love. Every day, over the last couple of months, I have been dipping into a love-letter. A Velocity of Being edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick is a captivating compilation of 121 letters to inspire “young readers” but as any reader knows, age has nothing to do with being in love with books. The letters are warm, witty, wondrous, and will stoke the embers of reading for those wh...

<i>A Typical </i><strong>Librarianly</strong><i> Problem</i>

26Oct

By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

A Typical Librarianly Problem

<strong>Meanings; Nothing and Everything </strong><br /><i>Imagining Borges' Library of Babel</i>

26Oct

By Jaya ModiNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

Meanings; Nothing and Everything
Imagining Borges' Library of Babel

Libraries have always appeared to me as fantastical places, imbued with limitless possibility, harbouring the prospect of unimaginably exciting journeys through space and time. I could lose myself for hours in a library, encountering vivid characters, following their wild lives, tracing ideas, concepts, and stumbling into places brought to life by the words of writers, poets, thinkers - all of which would leave lasting impressions on my and my imagination. As I’ve grown, I have learnt to appreciate the ways in which the library - in form and function - has changed, evolving as we have evolved, incorporating new needs and requirements, weighing the value of community, shared stories and experiences. This resonates with me at an incredibly intimate level - this beautiful act of constant expa...