In India I have never really heard from anyone referring to a public library as a place to visit for leisure. Whereas such concept is widely common in developed nations that I visited.
I remember spending most of my time in the public library in Orange County when I was on a one month visit to L.A. It was just a spectacular experience. Since, I was not a local, I could not take any books to home and read, but I was allowed to visit and read books there for as long as I wished . So, it was a pretty good deal, in fact much better than a deal in real and financial sense. That was because the folks there did not ask me for any payment. It was the library of the State and was a service provided to the inhabitants there. Revelation of that facility indeed shocked me. Even more shocking was the ambiance and the profile of the library. It was way way more technical and advanced than the paid and expensive public library in my place. In fact not even my place since I live in Vadodara, and in those days (5) years back I was not aware of any public library in my city. So, I had enrolled in the British Library at Mumbai. I used to visit there once in a month and would loan 2 books which I would promptly give back to them when I was done reading them within that time frame.
Though a little cumbersome an experience of traveling to Mumbai, then traveling within Mumbai (from Andheri to Mittal Towers, Nariman Point) was; but the pleasure of experiencing a reading resource a little similar to the public library in U.S.A was a very enriching one. Every month I would look forward to my library trip and then I would connect my eyes to the pages of a book and my imagination to the Brobdingnagian scope of things that only words within an elements of a book could provide.
That beautiful relationship of mine with books continued for 3 years. Then sadly the British library shut down its brick-and-mortar model and instead got into the mode of business which actually got them into closing down.
With the advent of e-commerce, the process of ordering books online went into a big way with Amazon.com.Though Amazon is universal, but local clones of it also garnered a good business in their respective locations. For an instance, our very own Flipkart; which does excelling job in the Indian scenario.
Though it is not backed with research, but I feel this growing e-commerce in the business of books must have led to the shutting down of the physical form of my British library. Though the library services are still on in the metro and semi-metro cities where the British Council is present, but I am affected in a big way. That is because one needs to have a physical address in a city like for me Ahmedabad or Mumbai which are close-by to avail the library services. Now the books ordered get delivered and also picked up when the due date arrives at the member's house itself. But without a physical presence in both these cities, things got pretty sad for me. Although, the library later came up with a complete online version for people like me who do not live in such few cities, but what they offer is only the online versions. Well that is something, I am not personally comfortable with. Well, itne bhi bure din nahi aye abhi....
I then moved on to the online book stores and also the brick-and-mortar stores available in my city like the Crosswords and Landmark. They are good, but the only issue is ME. I got so overboard with my purchases that my house started looking like one mini-library. I have one room dedicated to books apart from a completely full spacious Victorian book shelf already installed in the living room.Though at times I have even hidden some in my kitchen shelf too; so that my husband does not get to know any updates on my booksie fetish.
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The successful web commerce not only managed to wipe out the physical presence of the British Library, but I am sad to update that it also took away the brick-and-mortar form of the Landmark Book store in Vadodara. It recently shut down in my city and some apparel store has come up in its place. LOL
I confess of being an online shopper for books myself, but that Landmark store was not that bad. It was good in terms of the realistic discounts that it often came up with. I mostly baited on their 3 for 2 offers, which technically turned out to be a full 33% discount, assuming that I bought all 3 for the similar price.
Hence, another shut down story for books and book lovers like me. But there is some twist here.
Although I feel remorse, but it does not affect me much. That is because about an year back, I did something really smart. I enrolled up at the university library, Hansa Mehta of the M.S. University of Vadodara.
I took an appointment with the esteemed Dean of the faculty and he helped me out by letting me use the services as a corporate member. Although I look like any of those college students that hover in the library, but being in my early 30s, I obviously cannot be one to use the library for free like them.
I pay 1 grand annually for my fascination, but I tell you it is worth much more than that. Though the exteriors and interiors of the grand library look much like the ones I described above; but the contents are way way more. It includes a lot of books on which I have already spent a fortune on; like the ones of Tehrima Durrani and Ohran Pamuk.Of course, I regretted when I saw those obscure and expensive books in the university library.
Regrets like these pinch less when I get to read the The Satanic Verses from the same library. Yes, the very controversial and almost unavailable one; which for an update is banned for sale in the Indian sub-continent for sure. LOL. I have attached the snapshot from the flipkart search, which proves my point.
So surely, the next time if you hear the word public library, do not think of the word uncool at the same time. You never know it might have a book which could be worth a lot in the web world.
P.S: It also has all the series of commonly available fiction for the rookie readers - Chetan Bhagat ones.
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