A dim lit corridor led to a small room. Its entrance held a creaky metallic chair on one end , and a shaky wooden stool on the other. In between them stood a large register holding scribblings of many...
The man on the chair called himself a Librarian, taking the seat on the stool were its readers. A room packed with books -most of them old, some partly torn, some without cover pages. Starting from ground level to lofty heights, books seemed towering on me from all sides. I was about 12 then. While my friends went for Famous Five & Secret Seven, I devoured Tinkle Digest week after week.
Years rolled...face of Library changed. Libraries started giving out fresh, neat books- as good as new ones. Kiosks replaced bulky Entry Registers, dainty cushions replaced creaky chairs...Tinkle Digest took a back seat.
An inclination to pick Indian Authors took over. Sudha Murthy, Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi, Devdutt Pattanaik. Reading was taking a scandalous turn. Finishing a book & picking up the next one, became a craze. Craze turned into addiction. Addiction became a race. A race against no one in particular. Indian titles alone couldn't keep pace with it. So global authors chipped in... John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown. Non fiction, self help books joined in... Who Moved my Cheese, 6 Thinking Hats... Blue Ocean strategy, Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.....STOP!A refreshing pause came by... reading slowed down. Random books kept coming but the habit of reading was undergoing a change. From renting books to buying books & saving them to read another day! Books of interest kept adding up, adding became piling & piling became stocking. For want of space they were re-arranged, then shuffled, subsequently shifted, until one day...went out of sight.
I always wondered how the Librarian with a creaky chair reached out to the books he stacked at lofty heights. π€ Just as I wonder now, on which attic I have placed those books for future read.? Nothing aids my memory to tell exactly which books are stored in there. If I were to climb up & search them today, the place would resemble the same faintly lit library aisle that I had visited years back.............Originally this post was to find an end here!