Issues | Torchlight

<i>Kitabein Kuch Kehna Chahti Hain:</i> <strong>Children & Books at Studio Safdar</strong>

3Feb

By Sudhanva DeshpandeNo Comments

Issue 8 – January 2019, Spotlight

Kitabein Kuch Kehna Chahti Hain: Children & Books at Studio Safdar

For the last three and a half years, every Sunday without a single break, children from Shadi Khampur, Ranjit Nagar and Guru Nanak Nagar in West Delhi come to the Studio Safdar community library to read, to sing and play, to enter the world of books. Studio Safdar is an arts space, named after Safdar Hashmi (1954-1989), one of the founders of the theatre group Jana Natya Manch. Safdar was killed at the young age of 34, while performing a play in an industrial area on the outskirts of Delhi. Studio Safdar was set up in 2012, to give concrete shape to Safdar’s dream of a space that would on the one hand be a resource for theatre persons to hold rehearsals and performances, and on the other to revitalize the cultural and artistic life of a local, underprivileged community. Safdar himself wr...

<strong>Fifteen Copies and Counting:</strong><i> Why Wuthering Heights Keeps Multiplying on My Shelf</i>

3Feb

By Neha YadavNo Comments

Issue 8 – January 2019, Spotlight

Fifteen Copies and Counting: Why Wuthering Heights Keeps Multiplying on My Shelf

Like most people in ishq waala love with books, I have amassed a loosely curated personal library over the years. Illustration by Alia Sinha My parents, like most newly upwardly mobile folk who want to give their children a better education than the one they received, made fine distinctions between useful and wasteful reading all throughout my school years. This meant that all off-the-syllabus fiction was looked at askance; only textbooks constituted serious reading. My school years were therefore spent hungering after books. The school library allowed only one book per week and even that privilege was taken away during exam months and board years; very few peers read so borrowing was out too, and Kindle and Nook and other handy e-readers were still a few years away. I made the best of ...

<i>Preface to </i><strong>Issue 8 </strong>

1Feb

By Aravinda Anantharaman and Samina MishraNo Comments

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 ...

<strong>Bookshelf Travels:</strong><i> Borrowed Books in Personal Libraries </i>

1Feb

By Torchlight TeamNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Bookshelf Travels: Borrowed Books in Personal Libraries

Lovleen Misra जिस के पन्ने क़ैद न करें उसे क्या चुराना जो दिमाग संग दिल पे न छाए उसे क्या चुराना जो आपकी हमबिस्तर न बन सके उसे क्या चुराना जो किताबी हवस न जगाये उसे क्या चुराना जिसे लौटाने का मन चाहे उसे क्या चुराना. जो अपने घर पे अपनी न लगे उसे क्या चुराना जनाब, किताब तेरी या मेरी नहीं पढने वाली की होती है. Translation Why steal something Whose pages fail to entrap you Why steal something That does not overwhelm the stone-heart Why steal something That cannot share your bed Why steal something That does not provoke a bookish lust Why steal something That you want to return Why steal something That does not feel at home in your home Janab, a book is not mine or yours It belongs to the reader Roxanna Khan I borrowed this book circa 2013 from a close ...

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

1Feb

By Sujata NoronhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

On The Same Page

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. Think libraries and one does think about rules, about silence. about overdue fines. Here, we look at libraries and rules, to see if there are rules we must keep but maybe - just maybe -there are a few that are quite unnecessary! Cookie Monster in the Library - Really ? The Library brings to mind books, but it also brings to mind rules. Here is how Mike Thaler imagines them in The Librarian From B...

<i>Screen, Paper,</i> <strong>Stories! </strong>

26Jan

By Sayoni BasuNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Screen, Paper, Stories!

I am not what can be called a careful reader. I love printed books—I live surrounded by them, and help create them. But I dogear my books, and leave them open which cracks the spine. I read in the shower, which causes the pages to curl up. I’d like all the books of a series to match, but this, I am not really hung up about. What lingers for any book I read is the story within. This sounds really trite, I know, and while the pleasure from the physical book—the design and the feel of the paper and the weight of the cover—is very much there, these are pleasures I forget more quickly. Reading for me is very private. I do recommend books, of course to friends, and those I really really like, on social media— may be one in three months—because I feel the world needs to read them. I do not revi...

<strong>Rohith Vemula Library</strong>- <i>The new face of revolution</i>

26Jan

By Shataakshi Verma1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Rohith Vemula Library- The new face of revolution

Rohith Vemula, a young PhD scholar at Hyderabad University, committed suicide on January 17, 2016 prey to systemic oppression and institutionalised discrimination. His suicide triggered a new political wave throughout the country and brought to forefront the presence of caste, a reality rejected by many in the political space, and gave way to a movement bringing debates around caste to the centre stage. One result was the formation of Rohit Vemula Education Centre and Library in Phule Nagar, Powai, Mumbai. One enters the lane of Phule Nagar, near IIT Market, a slum community, to see the houses clinging to each other as one, people sitting and standing around their front doors, dogs running and sleeping around, feeling best at home, children playing and bustling around, all signs of a com...

<strong>Collections </strong>- <i>Who is responsible?</i>

26Jan

By Sujata NoronhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Collections - Who is responsible?

“Librarians are turning to the police to recover borrowed books” This was the headline in a national newspaper. The article went on to talk about how users in the public library treat borrowing as taking and that more than half the collection does not come back to the public library. We really need to pause to think about unreturned books. Does that constitute theft to necessitate police action? In what nature of relationships do we turn to the police? This really is the over riding question that we feel the library - the public library needs to consider. Relationships are at the stronghold of public services, it is why institutions like the public library were imagined in the 18th Century. In India, it was in the Princely State of Baroda where Maharaj Sayajirao III Gaekwad introduced...

<strong>This Book </strong><i>Need Not be Returned!</i>

20Jan

By Aravinda AnantharamanNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

This Book Need Not be Returned!

On Instagram, I find that Yamini Vijayan, editor of children’s books, has been chronicling community libraries from her travels. How many have you visited, and what are they like, I ask. “Oh so many,” she replies, “...libraries on islands, and libraries on top of hills. Libraries that are squeezed into biology labs. Libraries filled with bizarre religious and political texts. Sprawling libraries with not a soul in it. Tiny libraries that are exploding with readers. Grand libraries with grand bookshelves. Libraries in which books hang from strings tied to windows…” Her desire to visit libraries on her travels began with mild curiosity but has become second nature now. “Often, when I find myself in libraries located in relatively conservative cultures, I’m shocked by the number of very, ve...

<i>A </i><strong>Personal</strong><i> Readerly Problem</i>

20Jan

By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

It is hot and stuffy outside, and most locals are taking their afternoon naps. Inside a community library at Sheikh Sarai in New Delhi however, the world is wide awake. This motley bunch is not the usual lot that fills the small library rooms on a working week. They look around curiously, navigating new vocabularies and unfamiliar faces. They browse through rows of books and converse amidst themselves in their mother tongues. Once a week, under the initiative of the UNHCR-BOSCO Refugee Assistance Programme, around fifty Afghan children, aged between six and thirteen, visit the library as members. Entirely volunteer-driven, The Community Library Project (TCLP) passionately advocates reading for pleasure and learning as it upholds everyone’s right to access good quality books. An estimated...

<i>Review: Siddhartha Sarma’s </i><strong>Year of the Weeds is Essential Reading in Our Troubled Democracy</strong>

22Oct

By Samina Mishra1 Comment

Issue 7 – October 2018

Review: Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds is Essential Reading in Our Troubled Democracy

One of the biggest challenges for English children’s literature in India is the representation of realities from the non-English speaking parts of our society. It has been a struggle unique to writers of English in India – the struggle to find a self-confident voice that writes in a language given to us by colonialism. Today, that extends to the struggle of using that voice to bring stories of other post-colonial inequities - from villages and working class urban settlements, from forests and tribal lands. How can these mediated stories reflect realities that are so different from that of the readers of those books? And why should these realities matter to young adult readers? Siddhartha Sarma’s new book, Year of the Weeds, answers this in an exemplary way. It is the story of Korok, a you...

22Oct

By Caroline Fernandez2 Comments

Issue 7 – October 2018

Bosom Buddies

Growing up in Toronto, Canada—as a recent immigrant with skin a different colour from my mostly white classmates and an accent still adjusting to new pronunciations—I always felt the difference between myself and everyone else. For as long as I can remember, I was uncomfortable as a teen in my own skin and struggled with confidence issues. We had migrated from Dubai to Toronto when I was 5 years old, and the isolation of a new country was one of the reasons I withdrew into books and music early on. I became an avid reader and diary-keeper, and the versatility and character-building in books I read gave me hope that I would be OK as I was, no matter how uneasy or imperfect. I believed in the power of friendship. It didn’t matter that my classmates would see me on the school bus and taunt ...

<i>Cityscapes: </i><strong>Readerly Spaces in Hectic, Chaotic Mumbai</strong>

21Oct

By Isha PurkayasthaNo Comments

Issue 7 – October 2018

Cityscapes: Readerly Spaces in Hectic, Chaotic Mumbai

Mumbai is chaotic, vibrant and incessant. Public spaces in the city can be overwhelming; personal space in Mumbai is a luxury few can afford. However, with a little coaxing, it is possible to unearth places where one can introspect and unwind with a book. This is an effort to document in photos, a few places in the city that offer solace to readers. (Click on the photos for a bigger preview)