At 150, a sanctuary for book lovers reinvents itself

Mumbai’s David Sassoon Library hosts ‘chai pe charcha’ to brew fresh ideas for the future

August 15, 2016 02:32 am | Updated 02:32 am IST - Mumbai:

treasure trove: David Sasoon’s statue at the library at Kala Ghoda, Mumbai. It has a collection of 45,000 books.But the membership has gone down. — Photo: Vijay Kumar Bajaj

treasure trove: David Sasoon’s statue at the library at Kala Ghoda, Mumbai. It has a collection of 45,000 books.But the membership has gone down. — Photo: Vijay Kumar Bajaj

Govind Thadani went up to the small stage in the middle of the cosy garden on Saturday evening.

Mr. Thadani has been a member of the David Sassoon Library and Reading Room for six years. Now, he was readying himself to speak at the institution’s second chai pe charcha session, a gathering for members.

“This is a unique place,” he said, “with people from everywhere. You’d never be able to get such a nice place elsewhere.”

Mr. Thadani is one of the 2,589 members of the library, an institute set up in 1847 by a group of young mechanics of the Royal Mint and Government Dockyard as a museum for mechanical models and architecture design. It later received a donation of Rs. 60,000 from Jewish merchant David Sassoon in 1863, and came to be renamed after him.

The chai pe charcha programme is just one of a handful of new initiatives launched by the library ahead of its 150th Foundation Day celebrations in February next year. The distinctive Venetian Gothic-style building at Kala Ghoda is a grade-I heritage structure, claiming fame also as the place where Babasaheb Ambedkar worked on the final draft of the country’s Constitution.

“The heart of the library is its reading room,” said Ralphy Jhirad, a member for nearly 20 years. “It is special.”

Mr. Jhirad, 55, visits a couple of times a week, and sometimes up to three times a day when showing visitors around the city.

Others like Baldev Singh visit every day. Mr. Singh, 40, spent Rs. 2,000 of his monthly Rs. 2,200 salary as a 21-year-old in 1996 to become a life member and the library is part of his routine. The library has a collection of over 45,000 books in English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati.

It is open every day of the year and has a charming garden on the inside. But as people move away and reading electronically has become more popular, library membership has fallen by 1,000 in the past 15 years or so.

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