A few days ago, I visited the library in our town. I was pained to see just a few people inside. Disturbed terribly, I realised that there was a decline in the number of readers in libraries, which are fading out of modern life with people hardly visiting them.
Nowadays, people especially the young, inextricably accustomed, addicted and enslaved to smartphones, Internet and modern gadgets of various kinds, do not feel the necessity of visiting libraries in their villages, towns and cities; nor do they find time to be in libraries.
There were golden times when the young and the old would find time to visit libraries and invariably spend many hours in the mornings and evenings in libraries, reading books of various categories, magazines and newspapers. In my school, college and university days, library was an essential part of my life and education. To the people of my generation, the library was not just a building or a place of books, but a temple of learning like our educational institutions and a sacred shrine of knowledge. So I was habituated to visiting the library in our town whenever I found free time and I would pick up the books of my choice, magazines and newspapers, both regional and national, and had the pleasure of reading.
As a student of college, I took the membership of the library in our town and with the membership card, I would borrow books of poetry, novels, biographies, speeches and writings of Swami Vivekananda and read them at home and return them to the library before the due date. On Sundays and holidays, after breakfast at home, I would find myself in the library and spend a lot of time there, reading magazines and newspapers in the regional language and English. I utilised immensely the libraries in our college and university also to equip myself with sound knowledge in my chosen subjects in my degree and postgraduate courses.
I still remember vividly how I, strolling along the various rakes of the library, gazing at the books of different categories and subjects, pulling books off the rakes and reading a few pages, would ultimately chose books of my favourite authors like Rabindranath Tagore, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Ruskin Bond, Vikram Seth, S. Radhakrishnan and Vivekananda with my eyes glowing and a radiant smile flashing on my lips. During my search for books in the library, I would often be thrilled to stumble over a poet or story-writer and novelist of great fame unknown and unfamiliar to me, and in a state of excitement, I would borrow the book.
At home, while diving deep into the book of the new writer, I would be lost in the world of reading pleasure. My visits to libraries and the good deal of time I spent there among books, magazines and newspapers helped me a lot in widening the frontiers of my knowledge and acquiring skills in the English language.
It’s true that visiting the library and reading books on varied subjects there was indeed a fruitful and rewarding, pleasant experience only known to the ardent, regular visitors of my generation, but alien to the younger generation who seek the world of happiness in smartphones and modern gadgets. So it is the right time for young people to put aside their smartphones, think of libraries in their villages, towns and cities and cultivate the habit of visiting them at least on Sundays and spending a few hours reading good books and magazines and attaining the pleasure of reading apart from improving their knowledge.
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