It’s a Sunday. I, along with what looks like a few hundred people, have come to attend Human Library—a storytelling event, the concept for which had first originated in Copenhagen in 2000. Despite the fact that it clashes with the ICC Champions Trophy final between India and Pakistan, the queue currently runs down three floors of the Regal building in Connaught Place. “Wow, this is a lot of people!”, I hear an organiser exclaim.
We are all here to listen to “human books”—people who will share personal stories with “readers”. We can “borrow” these “books” for a length of time - in this case approximately 20 minutes. This is Human Library’s first appearance in Delhi, but they’ve held similar events in cities like Hyderabad, Indore and Mumbai.
In line with its initial aim to challenge stereotypes and prejudices, there are 11 “books” available in the library, and we each get to choose one. Among others, there’s Another High (a story about overcoming drug abuse), Break Free (which tackles issues of domestic abuse and gender equality), Cancer Survivor and Different and Able (a story about losing a part of your body).
My curiosity however leads me to pick a book called The Rover. It’s a story of “23,800 kms, traversing 17 countries in a single car without a backup and one woman who knows no boundaries”. It is my own experiences as a solo traveller that make me want to find out what it’s like for a woman travelling alone.
Once inside, I notice how seriously the organisers are taking the library gimmick. They hand us our library cards and one of them tells us, “The books are upstairs”. “Don’t take pictures unless the book allows”, another adds.
Choosing a book
Each session is to be attended by a group of five readers. After waiting a few more minutes, our group is lead to the first floor where the books sit on different round tables, waiting for their readers. Before we sit down, our library cards are taken and we are asked to mute our phones.
Our book introduces herself as Nidhi Tiwari. In a soft voice, she tells us that she doesn’t talk a lot, and it’d help if we asked her questions. But since we are all new to this, and remain silent, Nidhi begins her story. There are no props, no dramatisation—just someone sharing their life experiences as it is.
We find out that she is an extreme terrain driver; that not being able to take her two kids along on treks (her first love), had prompted her to buy her first vehicle—an old jeep she rebuilt with the help of a mechanic. She tells us about her first trip from Delhi to Ladakh with her kids, her mother and a maid. We hear, in brief, about her most intense one to date—a trip to Siberia, which made her the first Indian woman to drive to the coldest region in the world at -59C.
She talks about being stereotyped by car companies, of being thrown out of the house at the age of 16 by her parents for dropping out of school, and of working as a trek leader in an NGO where she would go on to face sexual harassment by the owner for two years.
It’s a lot to take in in 20 minutes. But, I have a lot of unanswered questions—how is Nidhi’s relationship with her parents now? Have people’s reactions to her travels been different across the world? How did she handle the harassment? But there’s no time left for more.
This doesn’t feel like reading a book. A summary perhaps; but nothing that allows for delving deep into a story. After an hour long wait, a twenty minute session that only briefly introduces a story is frustrating.
So I approach a volunteer, requesting to be squeezed into another session, and am relieved when she acquiesces. I attend not one, but three more sessions. The Himalayan Conservationist , Gaurav Schimar, doesn’t engage me enough, and I realise that whether it’s a print or a human book, it isn’t just the story, but the storytelling that matters. But unlike a written text, where the burden of storytelling is solely the author’s, Human Library places at least a part of that responsibility on the “readers” and their ability to ask the right questions. In a conventional book, asking these questions would be an editor’s job—a way to steer the author towards telling their story in the most engaging way possible.
But it’s my last session, with Aditya Vij, The Artefact Hunter , that I enjoy most. A big part of that has to do with the subject Vij deals with. He collects artefacts—cars, weights, watches, cameras, radios, matchboxes—and through this collection, tells the history of technology and human civilisation. He peppers his story with trivia—for example, how, before the 1950s, matchboxes in India were made of metal (to protecting them from getting wet) and photographs of the then reigning king of Great Britain would be printed on them.
The photograph used to be taken on a plate camera—which Vij holds in front of us—demonstrating its operation. Vij’s narration is engaging, and his enthusiasm catching. Of course, the fact that his story deals with historical trivia and curios, instead of emotions and the human condition, also makes it easier to digest. It encourages curiosity, but not the kind that leaves you dissatisfied.
A hurried experience
It’s the lack of time that takes a lot away from the event, but the concept itself allows for a greater level of empathy than books themselves.
You can close a book and put away the unpleasant or disturbing bits in it, but how do you ignore someone sitting across from you and looking you right in the eye while they tell you their story? Not a professional storyteller with carefully crafted ebullience, just a regular person like you.
This open-to-all event gives people an opportunity to interact, in close proximity, with people they otherwise might not meet in their day to day life. It facilitates the travel of ideas beyond socio-economic boundaries, which are otherwise so often clearly marked.
By itself, Human Library, Delhi needed tweaks—longer sessions and better narration. But the range of issues it tried to address was wide and inclusive enough to suggest the concept’s potential to open our minds in a way that our current education system cannot.
When he’s not chasing stories, the writer can be found playing Ultimate Frisbee or endless rounds of Catan.
