Me At Connemara Library

 

Hello dear reader!

      Writing this blog does bring me great joy. Firstly, the library that I am talking about today is located within the Government Museum complex in Chennai, a place which I have visited a lot of times mostly just for fun. However, I had never visited the library until last weekend. And secondly, most importantly, if you would scroll down the blogs down to the first one, you would realize that my first entry is about the museum itself! It’s been more than a year since my first blog! Oh, how time flies!

 

     Now this time, my visit to the library was in fact, not for pleasure, however I shall try my best to amuse you dear reader. Now let me begin with my arduous journey to the library.

 

   Since there were no trains on Sunday due to track maintenance, I went to the other side of the station, where you’d normally find a bus. However, as they were overcrowded as usual, I moved on to get on an auto-rikshaw or a tuk-tuk. Now if you’re not from Chennai, we have something here called a share-auto. It’s like carpooling, you share the fare with your fellow passengers. I have been on share autos before but this time it was a record. If you’d ask anyone back home in Kerala what’s the greatest number of adults that you could fit in one, they would probably say 4. Rookie numbers! I got in one that already had nine passengers!

     After a long lovely journey in the metro, I reached the library an hour late than I was supposed to, where my friends had already taken into reading. Now the English Literature department was surprisingly well managed. Anna Library had set the bar too high for me, however, Connemara Library is really good, at least on par with the former if not better. Being an old building with beautiful architecture, it gets extra points (Let me know if you would like a library review series). As I sat down in the little room reserved just for literature, I had a look around. It was a pretty old room, yet the books were remarkably updated and selected according to its relevance, and that’s all it needs to be, in my opinion.

 

      I took a stroll around the other reading halls, there were halls for magazines, STEM fields and whatnot. However before leaving I came across a mini museum (I do apologize for not taking pictures, it completely escaped my thoughts). They had old pictures of Chennai; landscape, British official documents, city plans and whatnot. However right next to this room, I struck gold!

 

     It was a room filled with ancient books including translations of the bible, records by the British, copies of famous pieces of literature brought to India from England and whatnot. You would even open them and look through it. However, I was not so sure if we could do that since the librarian was absent. Impulsively I opened a book carefully and feeling the paper disintegrating at my fingertips, I promptly decided not to let my curiosity run amok, since I didn’t want to get into trouble for destroying valuable historic property (I promise I didn’t ruin anything).  

 

      Having a late lunch, we returned to a park right in front of the library to have an ice cream. I quickly got into a train of thoughts, reminiscing my memories of the times I have been here over the course of two years. Oh, how everything is just different!

Before I end up sounding like a granpa who just turned eighty, I shall promptly end my blog right here.

 

Thank you for reading my blogs, dear reader, nothing would have been possible without you!

Until next time….

Lan