'The scene was an artist's dream come true'

Nividitha Gideon

18/03/2020

My Visit to the Library

I hail from a quaint little town called Coonoor, which fails to ring a bell with most people as it lies nudged into a small cranny beneath the shadow of its more popular neighboring town, Ooty.

During the winter the weather is fairly pleasant during the day, and it was on one such fair December morn, the 27th to be more precise, that I decided to set out and explore one of the Heritage sites of the hills, The Nilgiri Library. The travel failed to produce the literary aesthetic I was trying to cocoon myself into, but let’s set that aside for now, assuming that in this case, the journey did not matter as much as the destination.

On reaching the gate of the library, one has to take a short walk up the driveway leading to the building. This walk that barely takes up a minute is full of breath-taking scenes as one gets a marvelous view of the old building and its lush surroundings of Pine trees and Weeping Willows.

The gravel on the road is decorated with the crisp dry leaves fallen all over it, giving the visitor a very noisy welcome as he maneuvers his way amid the dead carcasses of leaves. I strongly recommend visiting the library during sunset for those who enjoy basking in the last rays of sunshine, just before it vanishes behind a thick grove of trees.

On entering the library, one is met with the immediate ambience which is often found in those elderly bungalows that still stand strong like retired veterans, full of mystery and mildew. It is safe to say that the place was fairly deserted, save for the librarian and her child who seemed to be back early from his school, but this only increased my joy, as I knew I would be saved the struggle of being amongst a bustle of people between whom I would have had to navigate my way quickly and un-interferingly.

After having registered my name, I entered the large hall with exposing windows and stuffed animal heads which decorated the walls. The carpeted room held a number of cushioned chairs that looked antique and comfortable, the kind you would expect to find in a museum exhibiting the remains of the British rule in India. I assumed this was the reading room, as I failed to find any books other than a few magazines and news papers arranged on teapoys near the chairs.

Having a quick glance at the few portraits and pictures depicting the history of the library, I found my way to the other end of the great room, which led to another small passage way, and lo and behold, I found a board above a large door with the words Fiction Room written in a playful font that immediately captivates a reader’s attention. 

I entered the room to find rows of bookshelves packed with a number of books, old and new. I was immediately certain that I would love this section the most, until I was proved wrong a little later. But in this moment, I was engrossed in the number of books alphabetically arranged in a span of ten large bookshelves.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a bookshelf dedicated to Indian authors, and smiled at Kushwant Singh as his name immediately caught my eye.

After a few minutes of happy perusal, I walked out again into the reading room to see what other hidden treasure the library might hold for me, and it wasn't long before I noticed an upper balcony on one side of the reading room, with another large door. I happily made my way upstairs, enjoying the little mourn each wooden step made under my weight, almost as if it were weary of such visitors as myself.

Upon entering the new room, I was certain that I had been transported to a world different from the one I had stood in moments ago. A magical aura encompassed me as I gazed at the huge walls lined with books till the ceiling, with Pindar and Aæsop peering down at my feeble being. I walked across the large room to an adjoining room that had a similar arrangement, relishing the solitude and comfort I was lucky to have on this lonely morning. 

I naturally pulled down a few books to see just how old they were, and was not surprised to find them all over a century old, if not more. Every book I had ever heard of in my life seemed to be within these four walls. There were sections marked as history, geography, philosophy, literature and what not. 

Needless to say that the literature section was my favorite, with all the writers and their works I had spent years studying right before my eyes.

After a few more minutes of awe-struck wonder, I stumbled across a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Cat's Cradle, and that was the end of my jolly perusal as I made my way down to the reading room again. 

I was thrilled to find the room slightly altered, with the inclusion of an elderly man reading the newspaper on one of the chairs beside a large window shedding plenty of light on him. Unknown to himself, he had increased the aesthetic appeal of the room, and I scuttled across the room as inconspicuously as possible and occupied a chair on the far end of the room to enjoy my book for the next several hours.

As I was reading this post-modern novel that completely leaves one unsettled, I couldn't help but gaze outside the window situated near me at the beautiful garden belonging to the library, and behind that, the mountains lined up against the sky. The scene was an artist's dream come true.

To say it was merely beautiful would be an unforgivable sin. This blissful state of admiration reminded me of the Romantics. Of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, all those men who were moved to a state of divine admiration in the presence of nature. It was in nature that they felt closest to a divine presence, a healing aura, far from the madding crowd. Sitting on my solitary chair against the window that day, I fancied that I finally understood a smidgen of what the Romantics hailed so greatly.

I began pondering upon all the things the Romantics regarded of high value, and was immediately reminded of their love for antiquity, of things that had passed away forever, even of old ruins that were disregarded by the public, where they were able to derive inspiration for some of the most renowned pieces of Romantic poetry. And I found myself reveling in the knowledge of being in one of the oldest buildings in the Nilgiris, not quite a ruin yet, but still only a shadow of what it must have been in its former splendor.

The Romantics were known to find beauty in the 'mundane' and ordinary world, things that people saw but failed to appreciate anymore. They re-opened the eyes of the world to the beauty that surrounds it, a solace from the ever-progressing society that dismisses anything that does not fit into its agenda of modernization. 

I thought about all the people who passed the gates of this library everyday, not giving it a second glance, completely oblivious to the treasure that this building held. I heard the chatter of the librarian's child from the reception desk and wondered if he comprehended the magnitude of the grandeur surrounding him. Nay, the millennial's mind does not wonder about such things, not when it has the right to access all the knowledge in the world with the tap of a screen.

Thinking of the librarian’s child, I was reminded of how the Romantics viewed children, the connection they believed a child to have with divinity. Wordsworth, one of the pioneers of Romantic poetry with the introduction of his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, is best known for his poem on Childhood, where he reminiscences the lost connection he held with divinity. He believed nature allowed man to have a close communion with the divine and form a bridge to join the void between man and God. Nature, with all it's divine, unadulterated purity. And this religious reverence of nature was found in all the poems during the age.

Shelley was also known to have dwelt on similar subjects, musing upon the lost innocence of childhood. There are few lines of his poems that are directly plucked out of Wordsworth's poems, implying his acceptance and praise of Wordsworth’s individual ideals. He was a revolutionary writer who took the age by storm and sought out unconventional and seemingly irrelevant ideas to write voluminous poems about.

And how can one forget John Keats, whose poems were drenched in the Romantic ideal of longing for the past and its pleasanter memories. His melancholic poems, paired with his brief and painful life are sad enough to melt a grown man's heart and bring tears to his eyes. His poems were those that are written by one who knows that his end is near, but still does not fail to find sweetness and light in the physical world around him.

Coleridge had an utterly different personality altogether. Though often condemned for his unconventional ways by more conservative admirers, one can't help but marvel at the thoughts and imaginative ideas that form the basis of his poems. Kubla Khan, a character who is still praised for his rich and varied description, can be found being recited and glorified even in the movies of today.

Finally, my thoughts dwelt on Lamb and his power to captivate a reader, by making his own personal memories and reminiscences the memories and reminiscences of the reader, which in turn makes the reader long for something he never had. His essays had their own poetic tunes in it, as he carefully constructed each sentence with a number of phrasal verbs and repetitive adjectives, whilst making sure he was scarce with the full stops he used in each essay as he had a knack for communicating much with only a few interruptive punctuation marks.

Lamb’s essays ‘Dream Children’ and ‘South Sea House’ have a very endearing effect in it, as the reader feels lovely, delighted, engrossed, and finally a little short of cheated or slighted as he discovers that the entire memory may have been a fabricated piece of fiction, and not the autobiographical tale of the author he had supposed it to be.

These writers, who have all stood the test of time, are now being woken up again from their short slumber as the world once again finds itself in a state of confusion and religious distrust. Man is beginning to look towards nature again, only to find that he has completely destroyed her.

Wordsworth’s words are now being used by eco-critics to convince man to change his ways and strive towards an empathetic view of the world.

The Romantics had the capacity to wonder. To wonder at the world around them, the animals, the birds, the flowers and the grass beneath their feet. They emphasized on the importance of memories, memories that one recollected and reflected upon in tranquility. The emotions that overcome a being when lost in the admiration of something heavenly. These were the driving forces and features of their poems. These features elevated them above the writers of the previous era who strove for tailor-made poems, cut to perfection. There is much imagination and spontaneity lost in calculative thinking.

It was among these musings and ponderings when I realized that the sun's rays streaming in from the window behind me had taken a reddish tinge and had assumed a dull luminosity. I looked about the room and found the chair occupied by my silent companion deserted, for how long, only the bison head looking down upon us can tell. 

I quickly got up and strode to the main library to return Mr. Vonnegut to his rightful place, all the while imagining what must take place within these four whitewashed walls once the sun had set and the doors all locked. It is needless to say that I pictured a very similar version of Swift’s Battle of the Books taking place, and was happy to make myself scarce before the bloody battle began.

Thank you

Works Cited

1. Vonnegut, Kurt, Cat's Cradle, Del Publishing Co., Inc, 1963, Print

2. Anstey Sandra, William Wordsworth Selected Poems, Oxford University, 2006, Print.

3. Smith David, The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, Clarendon Press, 1936, Print.

4. Peacock Guy, Modern Prose, J. M Dent and Sons LTD., 1922, Print.