Living with the dream of being a librarian
Arange of professions fascinated me at various stages of life. During school, in complete compliance with the herd mentality those days, my hand would shoot up excitedly when asked what I wanted to grow up to be and I would primly and unimaginatively announce, “An IFS officer,” as if that was the easiest thing in the world! That idea began to pale as I entered my teens. The glamour world glittered and falsely beckoned with a host of professions like that of a model and air-hostess. As I grew older and realistic, microbiology and journalism figured high on my list of probable or suitable careers but like a precious nugget closest to my heart, I secretly nurtured the job of a librarian.
Imagine a vast hall with a high ceiling, a little mildewed, sunlight filtering through its numerous windows, silent and slightly dusty, lined with innumerable tall shelves stacked with hundreds of books, waiting to be discovered, opened, and savoured. It was the stuff my dreams were made of!
I pictured myself sitting with a new book every day and getting to read, before anyone else, the classics, the latest thrillers and of course Barbara Cartland! Childishly, I assumed there was no real work involved except handing out books and donning a forbidding countenance to discourage late returns. Much later, when I discovered that the study of library science included cataloging, archiving resources, analysing and managing them for access and other mindnumbing work, I hurriedly changed my mind.
In Ambala, where my maternal home is, whatever said of the small, mofussil town, it boasted, and still proudly does, of a humungous and fantastically stocked library. The State Central library in Ambala Cantonment, built in 1920 during the British rule, has 64,000 books and from my grandparents to mother and then us siblings, all were proud owners of library cards which were covered from front to back with entries and dog-eared from use. With whoops of delight, we would discover gems of novels lying discarded and ignored in nondescript corners and would pore over them delightedly, turn by turn. The bus journey in the stifling heat notwithstanding, the library visits were the highlight of our vacation.
After I got married in Punjab, I set about looking for a library in my city. The Guru Nanak State Library, when I chanced upon it, was in a shambles. A decrepit building, crumbling with age and neglect, where I once even chanced upon stray cattle, nosing about its knee-high grass. The few books I found there were so disheartening. Two elderly gentlemen were snoozing over a bunch of newspapers and the librarian was nowhere to be seen. How I missed my maternal home then! With no resort to big bookshops or internet giants such as Amazon or Flipkart today, getting one’s hands on books was no mean task then.
German novelist Heinrich Mann rightly said, “A room without books is like a room without windows.”
As for myself, my eyes of their own accord skim any room I enter, searching for the beloved bookshelf and sadly, more often than not these days, are disappointed.
FROM MY GRANDPARENTS TO MOTHER AND THEN US SIBLINGS, ALL WERE PROUD OWNERS OF LIBRARY CARDS COVERED FROM FRONT TO BACK WITH ENTRIES AND DOGEARED FROM USE