Community Living - Well Begun is Half Done

Community Living - Well Begun is Half Done

So the saying goes - and it applies no less to Srishti Apartments Library.

“My Library @ Srishti”, a brainchild of Sanjay, B-104, ably assisted by Jaya and a few other ladies, was inaugurated last Sunday by Shri V.N Radhakrishnan, A-503. A gathering of around 30 might sound a little less for 144 flats on a Sunday evening, but then it was just an hour before the clash of the Titans – Sri Lanka and West Indies in the T-20 World Cup final. Anyway, small is beautiful. And it permitted a meaningful interaction among the audience. 

Mr Radhakrishnan provided the right impetus by donating nearly 50 novels. We learn Shobha, B-105, followed suit later. Others donated as many as the books they were still left with. One senior confided in me that hardly a month ago he gave away 210 books to a library – engineering, educational, thought-provoking, and what have you.  At home Aunty rang up her younger sister in JP Nagar to alert her to reserve all the novels of her two teenage daughters for donation. But alas, she had already given them away – less in philanthropy than in rage that the girls were more into those books than their own curriculum texts. Aunty now plans to tap her brother whose two sons, also in their teens and voracious readers, to earmark the read books for donation.

From a cursory glance the present Library acquisition doesn’t seem too bad. It has such authors as Somerset Maugham (not more than 3 pages at a time by my reckoning), Stephen King, the king of horror, David Baldacci (one of my favourites), Erle Stanley Gardner, of the Perry Mason fame (a fan of his as a child), Dan Brown, Ken Follett… These books have been neatly classified into Children’s, Adult, English, Kannada, Fiction, Non Fiction… including the name and flat number of the donor. Let’s hope this is a precursor to more books flooding the Library rack – presently an almirah kindly donated by the Sanjay to perpetuate the memory of his father, my friend, Srivatsa ji. Hopefully the books yet to find their way would be J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Enid Blyton’s Hardy Boys, and many more that would enthuse children.

Yes, I mean children, because in the thirty minutes that I spent last evening, as Aunty gave a helping hand in disbursing books, I found them (6 to 12) thronging to select books. Normally one finds children rush home for a glass or two of water after a strenuous Karate session, but these children were speeding to the Library to be in time before closure, to pick their favourite books, still perspiring and gasping. I won’t brush this off as initial enthusiasm, but would dare to forecast it as ‘literary giants in the making in Srishti’.

All the best.

V.V. Sundaram

B-703

11 October 2012