Life in Libraries

Borrowed books, literary spaces and good reads.. life in a series of libraries 📚🏛️

The Neighborhood

To a neighborhood comic shop, I’d take my Rs 10 pocket money and borrow 5 comics for Rs 2 while buying one would cost Rs 10. I eagerly waited for new editions and releases of new parts. The shopkeeper was a pure businessman, even rude if kids touched the books or didn’t pay on time.

⸻

Reading Relatives

My aunts, both in early 20s and college going had their own rooms with shelves full of books and Archie comics. They were my parents’ cousins but lived next door to my respective grandmothers. Every time we visited, I’d slip into their rooms and read for hours while they chatted with my older siblings. Another uncle, ironically my age, had an epic comic collection. He never let me carry anything back, so read whatever I could there. I always felt his parents loved him more.

⸻

Friends With Benefits 

My brother insists he introduced me to reading — but Shakespeare, Alvin Toffler, and Autumn of the Patriarch are hardly a child’s reading starter pack. Luckily, my friends’ parents were massive readers and their libraries were stocked. 

My first tryst with English fairy tales came from the collection of a childhood friend, the daughter of an IAS officer. A college friend inherited her father’s library and opened up new genres for me. I once spilled something on her book and she stopped taking my calls.

Eventually, I found book clubs and a world of readers to borrow from and share with.

⸻

Institutional Libraries

A good library is where a curious reader falls in like Alice in Wonderland. My schools had extensive libraries but many rules, locks and strictly administrative librarians who limited access. 

College was limited to finance, and MBA was all management with little or no fiction. I did meet some good non-fiction readers, but the hostel rooms had the real book lovers. 

For Rs 100 a month, Kwench delivered and picked up books from office. That’s where my love for reading and writing went to next level — with bookish thoughts and blogs. I probably stayed so long in that company for this service.

⸻

Community Library

Two wintry years in Copenhagen and a pandemic lockdown are the perfect recipe for a bibliophile. Their collection, mostly Danish, had one big shelf of English fiction — an eclectic mix featuring unique global voices from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. That’s where I discovered authors like Rana Dasgupta, Mieko Kawakami and many others. 

⸻

Traveling Libraries

A cruise, an international resort, a hotel, a hill-station café, an Airbnb, or a roadside motel — books found their way to me through travels and travellers.

Some were real treasures I’d never have picked otherwise — including the Used Book Club and biography of Maharani Gayatri Devi. And some were memorable for the wrong reasons (hello, Shopaholic series).