23Sep 
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22Sep 
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No Comments किताबों का अंबार
(लेखक : यह सिर्फ़ एक लिखित दस्तावेज़ नहीं है बल्कि ये बतलाता है कि निम्नवर्गीये बसेरों में पढ़ने की जगहों का धीरे - धीरे करके लुप्त हो जाना कितने पाठकों को खो रहा है। हम ये तो मानकर चलते हैं कि हर इंसान एक पुस्तकालय की तरह होता है लेकिन इस पुस्तकालय से मिलने की जगह कहाँ है? ये दस्तावेज़ उस 'कहाँ' को देखने की चेष्ठा में अभी तक ख़त्म ही नहीं हुआ है...)
Photo credit: Lakhmi Kohli
ज़मीन पर एक बेहद जज्जर सी दरी बिछा दी गई। पूरी जगह अभी खाली है। दरी बिछा कर पार्क को साफ करने का काम किया जा रहा है। बड़ी सी झाड़ू को लिए एक शख्स ज़मीन की छाती को चीर रहा है। सूखे पत्ते उस झाड़ू की चुभन से दूर होकर यहाँ से वहाँ दौड़ लगा रहे हैं। कभी कोने में चले जाते हैं तो कभी बीच में आ जाते हैं। ज़मीन फिर भी साफ होती दिखाई दे रही है। झाड़ू लगाता हुआ शख्स दरी के ऊपर से भी उसी तरह से सफाई कर रहा है जैसे ज़मीन की कर रहा था। झ...
15Sep 
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No Comments Crowded Readings: The Children’s Magazine in Colonial North India
Wherever people habitually congregate, that is a potential site for a library.
- S R Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science (1931)
Illustration: Alia Sinha
In anti-intellectual cultures, or cultures that prioritise the so-called everyday business of living over reading—more particularly life in the survival mode—reading is often seen as taking time off from life, and thus a luxury. Historically, reading has been seen as a proxy form of living, sort of like today’s social media. Marcel Proust tried to break apart this polarised view of living versus reading by calling attention to the relationship between childhood reading and its many interruptions — a friend coming to play, dinnertime, sun glinting in your eye, etc. These interruptions might have seemed annoying at t...
12Sep 
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2 Comments Is There Something Odd About Me?
Why we need queer-inclusive children's libraries
Adults have an instinctive need to protect children. It is a worthy goal, but when adults begin to sanitise the world children are exposed to, it is analogous to keeping them in a sterile environment. They are deprived of a chance to develop and to understand the world. Sanitising stories of things that are uncomfortable to discuss begs the question: what are we protecting the child from? Is there an appropriate age, for example, at which to let children learn that grown-ups like becoming close friends, dating, falling in love, marrying each other, separating from a partner - not necessarily in that order? Why do we erase realities like abuse and war from children's stories? Whether we like it or not, children see these things all...
12Sep No Comments
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10Sep 
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No Comments 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.
"And I say to myself, 'What a wonderful world!'"
From the 1990s, school classrooms across the world started to become ethnically and culturally more diverse. As populations migrated from their home countries—by choice or compulsion—immigrant cultures and languages permeated classrooms. The need to understand and be understood by classmates is daunting for a child who speaks a different tongue. How doe...
20Aug 
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No Comments बच्चों के बीच किताब : कजरी गाय झूले पर
प्रारंभिक साक्षरता पर काम करते हुए हमें शिक्षण के उद्देश्यों को एक व्यापक फलक पर देखने का प्रयास करना चाहिए| यह समझना चाहिए इन उद्देश्यों में पढ़कर समझ बनाने के साथ एक पाठक बनाने की बात भी शामिल है| कक्षा में किसी पाठ पर काम करने का उद्देश्य केवल इतना ही न हो कि हमने पाठ दिया| उसके प्रश्नोत्तर, अभ्यास पूरे करा दिए| प्रारंभिक साक्षरता पर कक्षा में काम करते हुए कहीं यह ध्येय होना चाहिए कि पढ़ने–लिखने की प्रक्रिया को बच्चे अपने व आसपास के अनुभवों, सोच व कल्पना से जोड़ पाएं| यह कक्षा की प्रक्रियाओं को सार्थक बनाने के लिए तो आवश्यक है| वहीँ किसी पाठ पर समझ बनाने का अभिन्न हिस्सा भी है|
इस संदर्भ में बच्चों को पाठक बनाने के लिए उन्हें नियमित पढ़ने के मौके देना व अच्छे बाल साहित्य से परिचित करवाना भी महत्वपूर्ण क्रियाकलाप है| इसमें बच्चे पढ़ने/ सुननेकी प्रक्रिया में जहां कहानी का आनंद ले रहे हो...
19Aug 
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No Comments A Love that Grows
I grew up at a time when watching an occasional movie at the only theatre in town along with parents and siblings, or friends, was what a day out was all about. There was no other screen viewing, malls, play zones or much money in either parents’ account. But, what might seem to be a mirthless scenario was, in fact, a ‘blessing in disguise’. My father’s library, replete with an array of books on a variety of subjects was a delight in my growing years. The love of reading was nurtured by my parents who were avid readers, themselves. When the holiday season came, my father would walk with us to Singbal Book House, a significant repository of interesting books during that time, and throw open before us a choice of reading delights. Lavish holidays and amusements were out of bounds, but it wa...
16Jun 
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No Comments Story Stacks
In 1993, Armenian-American artist Nina Katchadourian devised an unconventional way of extracting meaning from books. She began running her eyes over entire bookshelves, whether in private homes or specialized collections, and pulling out titles that seemed to suggest a story. She would then group these in a cluster that hinted at some self-enclosed tale. And the Sorted Books project was born.
Nina K's project recognises the untapped potential of all book collections. Readers are invariably gluttons for stories: oral narratives, family anecdotes, tall tales, local gossip; we will accept all with gratitude and then go out looking for some more. Why, then, must the storytelling power of a book be thought finished with the last page? Sorted Books is also an exercise in biography. These cluste...
6Jun 
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No Comments Reading across Countries, Time, and City Spaces
I don’t remember learning to read. But, I do remember reading; going down a few steps to a mezzanine floor, to three rooms lined with shelves, a large circular table, a few chairs, and books, everywhere, shelves, table, chairs, windowsills and floor.
We were a Goan family in the French concession in Shanghai. As children growing up with multiple languages, Portuguese, French and Chinese, English was unknown. One day, the parents decided that English would be the language spoken at home. My father bought books, new and second-hand, singly and in lots to further this. I remember these masses of dusty books, English, French, and a few yellowy black bound Portuguese books. As an asthmatic, I was forbidden to go to the library, but I often crept in and breathed deeply of the atmosphere, old...
4Jun 
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2 Comments A Two-way Street
Ever since I began working, libraries have been part of my work. I had an experience of working at the research and reference wing of Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. In my previous organisation and current one, my work takes me to children’s libraries in schools. For a long time, I did not realise that communities and libraries are intertwined, and meant to be a part of each other. It seemed to me that libraries were meant for either children or adult readers. And reading for me was reading the text. Community members were seldom part of library activities because they did not access libraries for reading books.It was assumed that in order to engage one needs to be literate. I did not find this odd till I realised, in the course of my work, that reading is not limited to reading only the text...
4Jun 
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1 Comment All I Want is a Room…
There is an old abandoned house in Pamposh Enclave – once a small, innocuous neighbourhood, now become posh by the lottery of location. Its proximity to Nehru Place roots it in the very heart of South Delhi – and like all its proximate hoods, it too has changed. Older ‘Kothis’ with front lawns and terrace ‘Barsatis’ are collapsing. They are being demolished, rebuilt, and rebranded as ‘Builder Floors’. They have stilt parking for multiple cars; the terraces are given over to gigantic generators and water storage tanks.
But C 13 stands alone, and it bucks the trend.
We do not know why C 13 remains in this partially unkempt condition – in defiance of all around it. But as I discovered happily one April evening, it is to be celebrated.
I went, having rece...
4Jun 
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3 Comments Reading a Second-Hand Book: A Journey of Serendipity
Walking into a quaint second-hand bookstore and accidentally discovering a book that one has been searching for are two necessary ingredients of any bibliophile’s dream. In case you have already conjured up an image of this dream, you have me for company. Memories of stumbling upon childhood classics or rare out-of-print novels in ‘Bookworm’ or ‘Murthys’ Select Bookstore’ have come rushing back as I write this article. While some of you might opt for your books to be fresh and unused, I usually prefer second-hand copies, which have carefully preserved the experiences and memories of the previous readers within its delicate pages.
By being held in the hands of several other individuals, second-hand books have an irreplaceable charm. Be it the inscriptions on the flyleaf, the do...
31May 
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No Comments A Thousand Wrinkles (Why I Love To Read)
I don’t suppose you’ve met Nyima. But then, by a crazy accident, perhaps you have. Strange coincidences do happen in this world. Perhaps you took a holiday to Ladakh and bumped into her. In which case, you would have met Urghyen, her father, too. You must have seen the way his face shows a thousand wrinkles when he smiles. And you would have met her shaggy dog and seen how Urghyen immobilises him by putting his forepaws into his collar so he does not bother people.
You would have seen Nyima milking the goats and picking up their droppings which her family uses for fuel to survive the biting winter. And perhaps Nyima took you to the Hanle monastery where she prays for the goats and yaks of her tribe, the Changpas. Nyima must definitely have shown you her father’s rebo (the trad...
30May No Comments
No Comments 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.
Las Misiones Pedagógicas
Imagine borrowing a book from a library and finding card in it, which reads:
When you finish your work wash your hands and take the book you have requested. Find a quiet spot and read. You’ll always remember these moments with pleasure. Then put the book away carefully until you can continue reading. Make sure that you when you return the book after reading it, it is as ...
29May 
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No Comments Shakespeare and Me
One Sunday morning when we were living in Calcutta, my father announced that we would be moving to Bangalore. His office had transferred him there for a project. What was a project, and where was Bangalore, demanded my sister, who was just six, and therefore had questions about everything. My mother murmured something about work and machines, and took out the atlas.
I remained silent. I was in Class 4, I had seen the map of India many times and knew roughly where Bangalore was, but I didn’t want to move anywhere. I didn’t want to move away from my dozens of friends in the building, my school, and my city.
We moved in the middle of the first term. I remained angry and resentful as we packed my new school uniforms: why were we taking them? I wouldn’t be using them a...
29May 1 Comment
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28May 
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19Feb No Comments
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24Jan No Comments
No Comments The Girl Who Ate Books
Dear reader,
Have you ever been strong-armed into attending a party? Have you, despite a magnificent display of resistance and reluctance, found yourself obliged to drive over to a colleague/friend’s house, gift and graces in tow, to mingle with fellow humans? On such occasions, when small talk has petered out and lots of awkward accidental eye contact has been made, have you found yourself seeking out a quiet balcony? Out in the blessed dark, away from the dhin-chak-dhin-chak of dance music, have you found yourself longing for the company of a book? A book that gets you; a book that is at once a billet-doux to the quiet readerly life and an account of the mad adventures and passion that lurk within pages and souls? Reader, meet The Girl Who Ate Books.
Nilanjana Roy is one of our mos...