Books are sacred, cherish them

AS A child I can remember my parents, grandparents, teachers and many others in my life, telling me the importance of books and their lifelong value. They instilled the ethos of reading and respect for anything that was written, they told me to protect books as though they were our holy books.

Yes, books are so close to the Holy Scriptures, like the Thirukurall, Bhagvat Gita, Bible and Qur’an.

If one of our books were on the floor, we would get an earful from our parents.

School text and working books were covered with pride and neatly labelled. If books were torn we would repair them with glue and the old faithful Sellotape, irrespective of who the book belonged to or where it came from.

We were so thankful for the many municipal libraries in our cities, towns and residential areas, available to many who would use these facilities to study, read and do homework.

Libraries were respected with their rule of no eating and drinking, silence and no unruly behaviour, but everyone was welcome.

I can clearly remember the reference section with encyclopedias and other information books. These books were gold to all students who were doing projects etc. Nowadays everyone just googles things.

Picking up those heavy books and making photostat copies was a mission on its own.

That’s what libraries and places of learning are supposed to do – educate people.

Resource centres should be treated like temples, mosques, churches, synagogues. To hear and see the libraries and places of learning being torched is heartbreaking. Is this what South Africa is all about – easy come, easy go? It seems that vandalism is becoming a national pastime for some people.

Raise your issues if you want to, there is nothing wrong with questioning the system, but don’t destroy what we have.

I thank our parents, community leaders, religious leaders and our so dedicated teachers for instilling in us the value of books.

I hope for the future of our children in South Africa that some old values and basic teachings can make a comeback.