Let me share with you a secret that you as readers probably already know. Books have saved us. In these past few weeks, amid much talk of structures that will symbolise a new India, my thoughts have turned instead to the institutions that were to me the fondest symbol of an old India — libraries. Worry not, however; this column will not be a lament of the liberal performing nostalgia and righteousness in equal measure via some imagined disappearance. For libraries still exist, as do library builders.
A library to me symbolises the other end of the loneliness that has been this pandemic; it is a more potent and contemplative form of chosen isolation meant to allow one to retreat into forms of knowledge only to emerge wiser, more prepared and more informed. And all this, surrounded by others seeking similar respite. Collectively, we withdraw from the immediate world into multiple other worlds of other spaces and times, providing the resolute certainty that this too shall pass, as much has passed before.
Libraries also produce greatly needed forms of community and gathering. From neighborhood lending libraries, where geeky children of many classes find access to that coveted book, to the community reading room for garrulous folks of all reading and talking stripes, they can be platforms for multiple forms of egalitarianism. The university library, where I sat out most of my graduate education, was a stage for all kinds of bodies, affects, and interactions. And then there is of course, the regular reel and real-life role that libraries play, allowing tentative and shy lovers to steal the occasional kiss and then some, behind rows of books that haven’t seen the light of readership for many years.
Feared and fetishised
Here I must also speak of the figure common to all libraries, the feared but also fetishised librarian. On the one hand, librarians in India symbolise discipline and order. They are the last frontier between careless and thieving readers and well-catalogued shelves, especially in a postcolonial country that had to, at one point, provide books to American libraries in exchange for wheat. (P.L.480 if you are interested; and many thanks to historian, author and translator A.R.Venkatachalapathy for the timely reference.)
At the other end of the spectrum, Americans imagine the librarian as a trope of sexiness and a reference for Halloween costumes. Cultural anthropologist Dustin M. Wax argues in a post on the anthropology blog Savage Minds that the sexy librarian became central to the American erotic imagination precisely because of the de-sexualisation entailed by the times in which female librarians entered public spaces. In his words, “the sexy librarian is seen as not just a woman underneath, but a super-sexual being, a “freak”, a “wild one”. She is a prize to be taken, a treasure to be captured, an exotic animal barely tamed beneath her bun and shapeless cardigan.”
But the stories of libraries and librarians that give wind to my wings these days have nothing to do with either of these tropes. Consider, for example, the work of The Community Library Project (TCLP), committed to “the work of building the movement for a publicly owned, free library system that is accessible to all.” Or the much circulated story of P.V. Chinnathambi, who in the words of P. Sainath, runs “one of the loneliest libraries in the forested wilderness of Kerala’s Idukki district”, and whose 160 books “are regularly borrowed, read and returned by poor Muthavan Adivasis”. I like to think of these libraries and their librarians as balms to the increasing isolation brought on by the personal laptop, headphones, growing social distance, and the losses entailed by a modernity of much promise and little hope.
At one online meeting I attended during these past few months, nobody spoke — we all just read together. Even though it was a poor substitute for the real thing, it reminded me of many a pleasant afternoon I have spent in Chennai’s winter sun at the Anna Centenary Library. Here, one December day of a different year, in the company of other heads bobbing in and out of books, I found staring at me my former advisor John Hartigan’s book Odd Tribes. In a new city, among new friends, I felt all right.
The writer teaches anthropology for a living, and is otherwise invested in names, places, animals and things.