It’s been years since I stumbled upon the grim world of Fyodor Dostoyevsky or the tragic romances of William Shakespeare. I had long forgotten my complicated relationship with the discipline of literature after I left college.
But, once again, I became thirsty for poetry and drama as I walked around the shelves in the English literature section of the Anna Centenary Library. On a hot day, when all you want is some solitary time in a true-blue Wordsworthian sense, take refuge here amidst a pile of books.
The smell of old and new pages can make you heady with happiness if you are a bookworm. The library, located at Kotturpuram, houses around 5.5 lakhs of books.
There are eight floors in this vast library, milling with college students, professors and literature enthusiasts. Each floor is dedicated to particular categories such as Linguistics and Literature, Political Science, Astronomy and Physics, Agriculture and Food Science, Geography, Tourism and Travel management and so on. The library also features a Book Release Hall, Conference Hall and Amphitheatre.
Below, there is a Braille section for the visually-challenged, with 1,500 printed Braille books, 145 e-books and 1,080 audio books.
In your time
On the ground floor, there is an Own Books Reading Section, where you can bring your notebooks, textbooks, learning materials and laptops. Research scholars, working at emergency pace to hit the last minute deadline come here to de-stress, carting their humongous theses and theory books, along with them. Many of the students here are from the fields of engineering and medicine. And, they mostly keep to themselves when they study. However, occasionally, you can find a few scholars from the Humanities stream, indulging in conversations on Rene Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant.
Apart from this, you can also take a look at the Children Section, Periodicals and Newspapers Section and Tamil Books Section. Children Section is located in the first floor and spreads over 15,000 sq ft. It houses around 60,000 books which cover alphabets, numerals and children encyclopedias. Children, between four and 14, can access this section. The walls, adorned with cartoons and a play area with a giant artificial tree, make this quite a favourite for the little ones. It also hosts story telling sessions in the weekend. They have also been conducting summer camps for children too.
Oh, do not forget the yummy refreshments. A milk booth in the ground floor offers you badam , rose and chocolate milk. There are also ice creams. This works perfectly for the students, exhausted by the heat. And, there is a subsidised canteen that offers you meals and vegetable biryani just outside the library.
By evening, many of the studious ones come out to take a brief walk around the sprawling campus. Some tell me that the place initiated them into the habit of reading, while others rely entirely on the collection to prepare for competitive exams like CAT and UPSC entrance. “I do not get such calm even in my campus. This space instantly puts me at ease and allows me to concentrate,” says a research scholar.
And, she could not be more right. Time literally comes to a standstill here. Through blue-tinted glasses, when you look at the city outside, you somehow do not feel the rush. The world looks beautiful and not so harsh because each of us here is carving our own little universe inside our books.
(For details, visit www.annacentenarylibrary.org)
