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...
21Sep 
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No Comments Library in My Colours
What Happens When You Ask 8-10 Year Old Kids to Draw Their Libraries?
Chaos.
Total, utter chaos.
Popular wisdom tells us that we are easier off herding a bunch of wild cats than devising plans that hinge on the cooperation of young children. So when yours truly commandeered a small group of miniature patrons at Panjim’s Bookworm library on a languorous Saturday morning for this project, she did it with a healthy dose of trepidation. She was righteously justified later when, despite the assistance of a supernaturally efficient and clearly beloved instructor, the kids refused to draw anything that even slightly resembled a conventional library. Buildings, seating, librarians, even books proved optional in the reading spaces these children envisioned. Life is what happens ...
17Sep 
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No Comments Preface to Issue 3
Dear Torchlighters,
The torch of bookish love was probably lit for all of us somewhere in our childhoods and this issue celebrates that by shining a light on Children and Libraries. It takes a village to raise a child, we know, and a library should occupy a central place in that village. Children need to have a plurality of experiences and influences and a library is one of the easiest ways of doing this. Every child should be able to walk into a library, pick a book off its shelves, perhaps talk to someone who loves that book, or maybe even daydream through its pages. Sadly, we are far away from that ideal in India, though we have had some excellent initiatives in recent times that must be celebrated and replicated. And so, this issue.
In Spotlight, we look back ...
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...
15Sep 
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No Comments The Enchanted Room: Remembering Childhood Libraries
SWAHA, CUTTACK, 1990s
In the small, sleepy town of Cuttack, summer is long. Too long or so they say. The sun glares down at you, the sweat sticks to your skin and there is little you can do outside. I don’t remember the heat so much because I escaped into a different world through books.
Growing up in a joint family with 20 members at any given point and more in a state of influx, I craved a space for myself, for my dreams to soar. They did – through the hundreds of books I borrowed from my school library and the personal collection of my father’s cousin. When I was in the middle of a book, I became anti-social - at least my mother complained that I did. Time, space and people did not matter.
...
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...
5Sep 
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No Comments Bugs of the Forest Floor
“Can I become a bug?” a question the Mama Bug encountered every evening in the playground. Mama Bug rejoiced to see her colony of bugs grow in size on the forest floor. With every new enthusiastic bug joining the colony, Mama Bug reminisced about the adventurous journey of triumphs and trials it had been. This colony was called The Bug Club where the bugs could read, observe, collect, explore, and share their love for the natural world. The forest floor transformed into a dynamic space where Mama Bug not only recycled waste but also nurtured and inspired a love for the forests in the young ones.
The Bug Club exploring the neighborhood backyards
This is the story of my journey from being a Textile Artist working in the area of Zero Waste to a Mama Bug (a title bestowed upon me by a ...
1Sep 
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1 Comment Open Libraries: Realities and Radical Possibilities
Usha Mukunda in conversation with Vivek Vellanki
This conversation is an edited version of a podcast originally featured as part of Dialoging Education, a podcast developed by the Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education, University of Delhi.
As an 8-year-old I eagerly waited for that one hour every week we used to get to spend in our school’s library. I had memorized the chore. We would all stand in a line outside our class, with fingers on our lips. The librarian, Rukmini Ma’am, would walk us to the library. All the while, there would be murmurs along the way; do you think the Hardy Boys solved the mystery? I am going to finish reading that story about Shikari Shambu today; I can’t wait to find out what happens to Harry Potter once he gets off the train. The library wa...
20Aug 
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No Comments The Value of Libraries: From the Eyes of a Book Blogger
The first time I walked into a library, I never understood the true power of being amongst such vast knowledge and history. I just knew that I liked books, and that I was broke so I needed some way to escape my boredom. Now, after nearly three years of being a book blogger and Youtuber, I can proudly admit that if not for libraries I would have never ended up where I am today.
I owe my love of books to libraries. Over time, my love for reading became more about overcoming those long days when I finished my homework or studying and had nothing else to do. It became more about completing those school reading logs that we were assigned once a week (which for the record I mostly lied about). I read to fight dragons, travel through time and fall in love, all in the comfort of my bedroom. I l...
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...
16Aug 
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1 Comment Lost & Found
Twelve-year-old Srini skips into the library. “Ma’am you have lost my library card,” she declares chirpily. You, the librarian for the day, are a volunteer who comes in only once a week. You’ve never met Srini before so you can’t take the accusation personally. When cards like hers can’t be traced, there’s a protocol. Hunt in all four card boxes, each one arranged alphabetically. When that fails, as it does now, you launch an investigation.
"My card is there somewhere!"
“When were you last in?”
“Long ago.” Long ago in child time could be one week or three months.
“Was it when school vacation began?”
“Maybe. I went to gaon after that.” So, May was when she last attended. The hunt is diverted to a box marked ‘retired cards’, where records of children who haven’t come in a whil...
16Jun No Comments
No Comments Preface
There are as many libraries as there are communities to imagine them; each library telling a different story of how it came into being. It may not be surprising for a community’s history and memories to be couched in “before the library“ and “after the library” terms. For, libraries, in celebrating curiosity, freedom of thought, and multiple modes of expression, hold the power to transform communities deeply, irrevocably.
Built on the bedrock of books, libraries serve as intellectually stimulating spaces, safe havens—and in more recent times creative hubs—for children and adults alike. The ever-expanding vision of libraries encompasses book discussions, poetry readings, film screenings, drama workshops, and art and craft activities. Library-goers channel their experience of ne...
16Jun No Comments
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...