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.
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