Issues

30Jan By Neha Gupta1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

क्रांति के लिए   किताबें

15 दिसंबर को जामिया मिलिया इस्लामिया में सिटीजन अमेंडमेंट एक्ट (CAA) के खिलाफ शांतिपूर्ण विरोध करते छात्रों और शिक्षकों पर दिल्ली पुलिस ने डंडे बरसाए; पुलिस ने इस हिंसा के दौरान डॉ ज़ाकिर हुसैन लाइब्रेरी में भी उपद्रव मचाया । इस घटना  से उत्पन्न “रीड फॉर रिवोल्यूशन” एक शक्तिशाली अहिंसक विरोध है । पुलिस की बर्बरता ने नागरिकता संशोधन अधिनियम के खिलाफ चल रहे राष्ट्रव्यापी आंदोलन को एक नया प्रोत्साहन दिया । पूरे भारत में लोग बड़ी संख्या में CAA के खिलाफ अपनी असहमति व्यक्त करने के लिए इकट्ठा हो रहे हैं । यह क़ानून और इसके लागू होने का तरीका असंवैधानिक होने के साथ-साथ हमारे देश की धर्मनिरपेक्ष परंपरा पर भी सवाल उठाता है । जामिया के छात्रों का विरोध - जो पुलिस हिंसा के वक़्त उनके पुस्तकालय में हुए नुक्सान के बाद शुरू हुए - असंख्यक रूप लेता है । इसमें शामिल हैं गीत और कविता, भाषण, कैंडल मार्च और रीड ...

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30Jan By Torchlight Team1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

Mad, Bad and Wicked: Censorship in School Libraries and its Subversion

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single school in possession of a library must censor its collection. Or so we suspected. Schools are inevitably ideologically charged institutions that represent precise social and historical concerns of their times, and function with their own frameworks of disciplining/ shaping the cultural understanding of their students. It follows that certain texts would be considered inflammatory, unsuitable, or too dangerous for students (children) to read... texts that could turn them mad, bad or wicked! Along with the educators and administrators of these educational institutions, parents, peers, and even children themselves may participate in the act of censorship. It also follows that young readers would be keen to access forbidden texts and and f...

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30Jan By Beena Choksi1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

On The Same Page

From the Margins 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. In a world beset with inequities, it’s not surprising that marginalised people are in the majority. Over the centuries, libraries have made available to marginalised populations what has been consistently denied to them: access, voice, and visibility. Together they lay the foundation for their empowerment. Here are some glimpses from across the world of what place libraries have in th...

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30Jan By Alia Sinha1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

A Scholarly Readerly Problem

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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

Contribute to the next issue

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 ...

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30Jan By Sayujya S1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

A Life-Story Through Libraries

She sits at her desk— A thirty-year-old Sharing her love for books With a class full of students. She taps the Pen in her hand Between her teeth, Reminiscing. Recording… * Age: Five Lusaka. School. The one hour she loves— Library Hour! In a darkish corner Of the library, She curls up— Cat-like— Lost in her own world, Ignoring her classmates Who clearly don’t care To read. A pony-tail, shorts and tee, Knee-length socks and A pair of pink shoes Wander through a maze of books. In the yellow light, The stacks seem tall… intimidating, Like giant tomes against her Puny height. A tiny, unsure hand Picks a book. She buries herself— Like the bookworm-in-the-apple-artwork Splashed across the library wall— Into a beanbag on an Alphabet-mat, Immersed in a world of Very human animals. * Age: Te...

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30Jan By Anam Zakaria1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

Classrooms for Peace

“Hindus got enraged and started the genocide of Muslims…Englishmen were the rulers and Hindus were the enemy,” reads one of the lines from a class 9&10 school textbook from Punjab, Pakistan (Subject: Urdu Grammar and Composition for the Academic Year 2012-2013). Another book from the same academic year, designed for a younger age group of class 5 states, “Hindus can never become the true friends of Muslims.”[1] Both of these textbooks are endorsed by the Pakistani government and distributed across public schools as well as many private low-income schools across the province. Textbooks from other provinces too often do not fare much better. Stories of one-sided violence of Hindus and Sikhs against Muslims at Partition are entrenched in the literature and reinforced in classroom setting...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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26Oct By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 11 – October 2019

A Typical Librarianly Problem

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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...

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21Jul By Nikhil, Nitesh and Priyanka1 Comment

Issue 10 – July 2019, Spotlight

सावदा घेवरा के पाठक

आइये मिले पाठकों से अंकुर किताबघर में किशोर-किशोरियाँ किताबों की दुनिया से जुड़ते हैं। किताबों को पढ़ते हैं, परखते हैं, सराहते हैं और उनके साथ रचनात्मक खेल भी करते हैं। किताबघर में कहने-सुनने, देखने-समझने, पढ़ने-लिखने और बयां करने के अलग-अलग अंदाज़ के लिए जगह है। साथी कहानियाँ पढ़ते भी हैं, और रचते भी हैं। कभी पढ़ी हुई कहानियों में अपनी रचनाओं के सिरे ढूंढ़ते हैं तो कभी अपने आसपास की घटनाओं और किरदारों से कहानियाँ बुनते हैं। अपनी रचनाओं को मोहल्ले में बाँटते हैं और मोहल्ले के लोगों को किताबघर से जुड़ने के लिए आमंत्रित करते हैं। अंकुर किताबघर, सावदा घेवरा के साथियों ने अपने मोहल्ले की ऐसी शख्सियतों को तलाशा जिन्हें किताबों से लगाव है और पढ़ने से जुड़े उनके क़िस्सों को सुना। ये क़िस्से थे रोज़ाना की ज़िम्मेदारियों और पाबंदियों में पढ़ने के लिए वक़्त चुराने के; पढ़ने के ठिकाने ढूंढ़ने के; पढ़ने की लत लगने के; ...

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21Jul By Torchlight Team2 Comments

Issue 10 – July 2019, Spotlight

Whose Land? Whose Rain? Whose Voice?

The Earth is not just for humans.Everything on the Earth has stories. Our literature represents our time on Earth. So when someone says, ‘our time will come’, it means their stories will be heard. How can we have ‘stories from the margins’ if we gaze from within the margins? Whose land? Whose rain? Whose voice? इस बारिश में / नरेश सक्सेना जिसके पास चली गयी मेरी ज़मीन उसी के पास अब मेरी बारिश भी चली गयी अब जो घिरती हैं काली घटाएं उसी के लिए घिरती है कूकती हैं कोयलें उसी के लिए उसी के लिए उठती है धरती के सीने से सोंधी सुगंध अब नहीं मेरे लिए हल नही बैल नही खेतों की गैल नहीं एक हरी बूँद नहीं तोते नहीं, ताल नहीं, नदी नहीं, आर्द्रा नक्षत्र नहीं, कजरी मल्हाहर नहीं मेरे लिए जिसकी नहीं कोई ज़मीन उसका नहीं कोई आसमान। These reflections and images are based on and woven around, an interview...

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21Jul By Samina Mishra1 Comment

Issue 10 – July 2019, Spotlight

Voices from the Library

Who is a librarian? Who chooses to become one? What keeps them in the library? In this video, we bring you voices of people who work in libraries and believe the space has helped them discover more about themselves.

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