Librarian Mama - carrying the world of books on a cycle!

It was the early 2000s and away on the East Coast Road in Chennai, by the bay, there wasn't a library nearby to borrow magazines. We missed our regular quota of Reader's Digest, Chandamama, Champak, Outlook, The Week and other reads. New to the area, I went around asking everyone if they knew of a library nearby, where did they get their books from? I discovered that there was a librarian who visited homes and delivered books. You could keep them for a fortnight and then on his next visit, he would collect those back and leave new ones for you. He charged a nominal sum that we could easily afford to pay and was a very tiny fraction of what it would cost to buy the magazines.

The first time we met Mama ( maternal Uncle - it is the usual form of addressing gentlemen much older than you) we realised that he cycled around delivering books and magazines. The cycle was a trusted big, black hero cycle and he carried the books in colourful bags made of thick plastic, that would hand from the handle bars and some stacked up on the carrier. On discovering that we would like children's books he offered to bring in comics too. He said on the Wednesdays that he visited our locality, we could leave the books to be exchanged on the doorstep in case we were going out for the evening. This also seemed a novel thing to do. As I got to know Chennai a little better, I realised that Mama cycled several kilometres each day from Mandaveli where the library was housed, delivering and collecting books from different parts of Chennai.

We would all eagerly await his arrival every fortnight. If we were around when he came we asked him in for a cup of tea and he would readily accept the invitation. I guess it was a welcome break and he always left thanking us profusely. While drinking tea, he would ask for permission to look at our book shelf and quietly look through the titles. In a little more than a year we moved again and went to the more prosaic format of visiting a library.

More than a decade later when I moved back to Chennai and to the same area, I asked around for the cycling librarian but couldn't trace him. Maybe as the townships grow, the librarian did not have to cater to the readers and they took their cars and bikes to the popular libraries dotting the town.

Today as CC was looking at a post about World Book Day, she recalled how the librarian Mama brought home books for her to read on a cycle. And how much she enjoyed giving him a list of books to bring on his next trip. So we thought it was time to write this post as a small tribute to the librarian Mama who cycled miles to bring the joys of the written word to all those who were craving for them! 

Here's wishing everyone a happy World Book Day and more power to those who keep the world of wonder alive for children!