One walk, three public libraries, many thoughts

Mandara Vishwanath, Preedip Balaji, Rajeswari Parasa, and Akash Chandan helped organise a Public Library Walk as part of City Scripts 2019, an annual urban writings festival hosted by the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) in Bengaluru. In this piece, they chronicle their experiences of the walk on 9 February 2019, which began at the Mythic Society Library on Nrupathunga Road, then moved on through Cubbon Park to the State Central Library, and ended at the IIHS Library in Sadashivanagar. The walk was curated and hosted by the chief librarians of each library.

It is easier than ever these days to buy a book. We live in the times of Amazon Prime guaranteeing overnight delivery and the Kindle providing easy access to a variety of books published worldwide at the click of a button. It makes us immediately wonder if anyone uses public libraries, and if these libraries are managing to keep up with what users want. While it may seem from the top that the library as a public institution is losing its relevance, the truth couldn’t be further from it. Public libraries aren’t just about the books they house; their architectural style, interior layout and collection of magazines and other resources, make them a huge part of a city’s social fabric. And what makes them most fabulous and welcoming are their librarians.

We discovered this and more as part of a Public Libraries Walk in Bengaluru, which covered three public libraries beginning with the 100-year old Mythic Society Library—home to some of the rarest collections of books and also to one of the few replicas of the Constitution of India. The library has been run by Srinivasan M who has been Chief Librarian for almost eight years now. His passion to foster a community of people engaged in cultural activities and reading was evident. Srinivasan took us through the Indo-European architecture of Daly Memorial Hall built in 1917, the erstwhile residence of Hugh Daly and showed us some of the rarest collection of books on Indian philosophy, history, architecture, and archaeology.

Daly Memorial Hall, entrance to the Mythic Society (Credit: Akash Chandan)

Sketch credit: Rajeswari Parasa

As an exemplar of the evolving culture of the library as a public institution, the Mythic Society has established research initiatives in the above-mentioned fields and also publishes the quarterly Mythic Society Journal. Jayasimha, the Society’s Research Associate introduced us to the Pavanje Art Gallery, a part of the Mythic Society, which had quirky toys, vintage geometry instruments, pastel colours used by the artist N.G. Pavanje for his paintings and art pieces. There were ceramic/wooden mini drums that were vibrantly coloured, miniatures of cooking utensils including tiny pickle jars and pots and pans that our grandmothers probably played with. By the time the ‘kitchen set’ game came three generations later, the miniatures were replaced with steel and plastic replicas.

Colourful toys displayed at Pavanje Art Gallery (Credit: Mandara Vishwanath)

This library has a replica of the Constitution of India, one of the few that was made in 2000. Even as 25 of us were huddled around old maps and yellowing pages of 17th century books, we found ourselves trying to guess the signatories to the constitution — we recognised the signatures of Nehru, Ambedkar, Vallabhai Patel and Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer. After being served some tea and coffee – “Our guests must be served well”, said Srinivasan – we continued on our walk to the second library—the State Central Library at Cubbon Park.

Twenty-five of us ambled along the 500 metre distance through Cubbon Park (rather than on the crowded dusty road), some of us chatting and bonding over our similar upbringing in Kannada-speaking households, our love for theatre and literature, and for parts of the city that we no longer frequented. The unhurried pace we maintained allowed us to enjoy the surroundings and even chat up Saturday morning walkers and joggers. Before we knew it, we had arrived at our destination. The landmark red building of the Sheshadri Iyer Memorial Hall or the State Central Library, which is over 103 years old, peeped at us from amidst the trees.

The approach to the State Central Library through Cubbon Park (Credit: Archita Suryanarayanan)

Sheshadri Iyer Memorial Hall, State Central Library, Cubbon Park (Credit: Mandara Vishwanath)

Premamurthy, the hearty, fun-loving librarian, showed us the different sections of the library that housed more than 3,27,000 books. The hall is semi-circular in shape with three parallel, concentric semi-ellipses with racks of books on the inside and outside. In the far corner of the competitive exam books section, Premamurthy led us to a towering shelf of books—old, hard-bound in blue and none stacked in their right place. Frequented by the many college students preparing for competitive exams in the fields of engineering, medicine, and law, as well as UPSC candidates, this section of the library was unique in that it was a quiet yet social space.

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, 1891-92 edition in the State Central Library, Cubbon Park (Credit: Mandara Vishwanath)

Inside the State Central Library
Photo credit: Mandara Vishwanath | Sketch credit: Rajeswari Parasa

Sceptics of the public library system should take note that the libraries are working extremely hard to open up access—for the elderly, the young, the one looking for WiFi, the one reading their newspaper, and the one studying for their next exam. It also has a large collection of books in Braille for visually challenged readers. The library has managed to evolve, adapt and increase its potential through the funding received from the local municipal body.

The government also has mobile libraries in blue buses which take books to different parts of the city, to people’s doorsteps. There are two such ‘libraries on wheels’, one covering each of the two City Central Libraries located in the north and north western parts of Bengaluru, while the other covers the southern and eastern parts of the city.  These libraries travel through the neighbourhoods in each zone once a week. Mobile libraries of the South zone operate from Hoskerehalli, through Padmanabhnagar, and end at Monotype, Banashankari.

The next part of our walk needed us to use transport, as the IIHS Library is located at a distance of 5 kms from Cubbon Park. Preedip Balaji, the head librarian, spoke to the walkers about how the library was first started about nine years ago with just 100 books that had been donated by the staff. It has since grown to become a repository of over 13,000 books,1,200 CDs and DVDs, 630 maps and a host of journals, and is aiming to become the largest library on urbanisation in the Global South.

A special exhibition titled ‘Sketch and the City’ was hosted at the library as part of City Scripts featuring city-themed sketchbooks of five artists: Priya Kurian, Rajiv Eipe, Sunando C, Somesh Kumar and Sheena Deviah. To bring in more people to view this exhibit, printed sketches were hung outside its walls. The library, which is housed on the third floor of the institution, came alive with people as they interacted with the books, commented on the sketches and then browsed the book collections.

Participants of the walk were excited about getting to know the city in a way that was more personal to them. “I’m fascinated at how well the books are preserved. I’m doing research in history so I look forward to coming here more often,” said one of the student-walkers who was impressed by how up-to-date the libraries were. Even within our team, it was apparent that the library walk had brought about different thoughts. Preedip, who was instrumental in setting up the walk, believed that libraries are of many types. Not all of them integrate, unite and function for the public, given their different clientele — public, academics, school children, and specialist audiences. The Public Libraries Walk was a first of its kind initiative to bring all these together, so that people not only welcome but also proactively claim these public spaces, breaking any institutional or administrative controls and other barriers. Rajeswari felt unsettled by the library walk because it reminded her of how distant we have become from these libraries.

A walk such as this was conceived to bring people with varying backgrounds and perspectives together in conversation. Can libraries not host conferences, talks, book launches, readings and more? Can they (or should it be, we) take inspiration from libraries abroad and open up these spaces to help cultivate hobbies? Could the goal be a simple, yet complicated one—to build engaged communities that feel the need for these public spaces? The answers to these questions are not easy but they may not be as difficult as we imagine, either.

The idea of walking through multiple libraries that are very different from each other in their contents and heritage but geographically close to each other, made us think of an urban reading network. Each library has its own regulars, its own mandates for collections of local or global titles; yet together, such a network of public, academic and historical common spaces of knowledge has come to not only reflect but also shape our varied publics. Can this space, when shared by a group of library enthusiasts, be the basis for a sort of ‘library community’ in the city? Does physically being in these spaces help people reconnect with the importance of public libraries to a city? Can we begin to think of libraries as foundational to the city’s social design, bringing different sorts of people together in different ways (at the library, at the bus stop for mobile libraries)?

Public libraries have been part of Bengaluru’s reading culture for a long time. In the same manner as food geographies, parks, police stations, traffic signals, flyovers and main roads come to structure our day to day lives in the city, libraries solidify our relationship with the city as reader-citizens. They allow people to walk in without membership and browse as long as they want every single day of the year (except on government holidays and weekly offs). Often, and in our little bubbles, we forget the value of that. We hope that this walk, which brought together various stakeholders of libraries, served as a reminder of the importance of these shared spaces.