A doctor, an engineer, a chef and a data scientist walk into a bar. Except it’s not a bar, it’s a library and this is no joke.
CHENNAI, 13/09/2010: The general section of the Anna Centenary Library at Kotturpuram, in Chennai. Photo: M. Vedhan
Four lakh fifty thousand — Anna Centenary Library holds a shocking number of books on any and every subject you could conjure up. And that’s just in English, it has another one lakh books in Tamil.
Come one, come all is the motto of this library. And by all, it means all. Looking for an Italian children’s fairytale? A book to help build your case in consumer court? To question God’s existence? Read Leonard Cohen poems? Or simply stare out at the Kotturpuram landscape, seven floors above the world, waiting for inspiration to strike. This is the place for you. The act of simply touching each book would take an entire day.
What other space in the city offers seven floors of books, stack after stack arranged neatly as far as the eye can see! You could get lost here. Pick a spot and sit comfortably inside the air conditioned corridors, equipped with computers.
It may not have the evocative smell of old books, but it still is romantic. Yours truly has found inspiration for many of her poems right here.
This is a place for people who actually want to read, and not take pictures for Instagram. And that is the reason why Anna Centenary is hands down the better haven for readers. Yes, readers, not simply “book lovers”.
Libraries are the best places to take a date, and Sweta Akundi won’t be convinced otherwise.
Fine! So I haven’t been reading a lot lately. I have a pile of books stacked by my bed, that only serves as a snack stand for when I watch FRIENDS reruns after work. I have a mini library downloaded on my phone, that I use to show off over chats. So, what?
CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU, 28/06/2018: A view of the Madras Literary Society inside the DPI Complex on College Road in Chennai on June 28, 2018. Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
It’s okay, because I know that when I find the right book, I will dive right in. I will devour it in two nights, and then go back to prowling Netflix or Amazon Prime till my next literary soulmate comes along. The trick is to keep finding new ones. And the way to find new ones is at a library — one that behaves like one, instead of stashing book after highbrow book on high shelves and leaving them to brood by themselves.
Madras Literary Society, unlike certain soulless multi-storey book stacks in town, doesn’t sit back idly and wait for readers to come to it. Instead, MLS is in the business of creating readers; and ardent preservers. It invites authors to tell their stories. It teaches children to conserve crumbling, age-old tomes, how to rescue them from Time. It makes sure that you feel invested in books, in their history and their future, that you prize and cherish them. Its hall might be narrow, and the path to it might be muddy, but Chennaiites show up anyway. Because they want to, not because they have thesis papers to finish. Because this is a library that behaves like a library should.
If you insult Meghna Majumdar’s favourite author, she will duel you to the death and use your useless little wand-sword as a bookmark.
In this column, we pit two Chennai icons against each other
