Knowledge Portals that I like visiting (part 1)

 Kishore C.S. (July 2001)

 Well I am not referring to Internet websites that contain information, but physical locations that contain lot of knowledge: Libraries.

 Last week I happened to visit to local library and it was at that time, I realized that my association with libraries continued for a long time and wanted to revisit my memories on all the libraries I visited.

Very Early Years

I have visited public libraries and also private rental libraries which always provided me enough material to read. The earliest I can recollect is when I was less than 10 years old. My family members used to rent books from a small rental stall. We were staying in Rajahmundry near Godavri Bund. I can't recollect more than the fact that this particular book stall was next to a temple in next street. One particular incident comes to my memory is once I went to return books and it started raining. When I started running I feel on the road. At this time I was not reading but helping my family members in getting books.

Early Years

This time we were staying in Danavaipet of Rajahmundry. Though my family members preferred to rent books from a book stall, I also used local public library to loan books. I also used to read books from rental stall. The books were mainly small (100 pages) pocket size story books that had prince, princess, magicians as villains as main themes. I also used to read regular children magazines like Chandamama, Balamitra. In one of those magazines solving Crossword puzzle used to be a major interest for me. I used to get together with my friends to be able to fill the crossword puzzle. I even sent a puzzle once but I think we got couple of the items on puzzle wrong and didn't get any prize.

I used to visit library in evenings after coming back from school. This library is located in Danavaipet park. I used to visit the library which used to be staffed by only two people - the librarian and his assistant. Sometimes I used to be first one to be there before library is opened at 4 PM and get into the library immediately after assistant opens the main door and dutifully help the assistant in opening the windows. From this library also I used to rent books on children's topics. Somehow I enjoyed always having some library books with me and enjoy it even now. I used to read daily comic serial in some newspapers and one of the main tasks after entering library would be to hunt for that particular newspaper. If I missed visiting the library a day, I could always look at old papers section and continue following the serial.

As I write these sentences I am getting mental images of those days. At that particular time I also used to read 'Competition Success Review' and seeing all the photos of IAS Toppers on this magazine, I also wanted to appear for IAS. I did take the exam once and failed - that is a different story. But this inspiration from this era persisted for quite sometime.

I recollect one particular day when Quiz Competition was conducted outside this library. I did not participate, but I watched the quiz show for quite sometime wishing I knew answers to some of them. (Don't ask me why I remember this alone)

College Years

When I started with my intermediate (11^th, 12^th standard) college, we used to have a college library. But we rarely get time to visit the library which opens only for specific hours. Keeping my tradition of loaning books, I loaned books from this library also, but returned most of the books unread. This was one of the periods where I used to be quite busy with studies.

Since college library didn't contain many non-technical books, I used to visit Gowthami Public Library which is around 4 kms from home. I used to visit this only on weekends or once in a fortnight. This is the place where I read most of the books by R.K.Narayan (My favorite author). At the time I used to visit this library it was located in the old building with books section in ground floor and Newspapers and Magazines in First floor.

My reading habits made me visit lot of libraries and I will share my experiences in visiting other libraries in next article.

(To be continued in next part. )

Read Part 2