PU library seeks Rs 60L from MHRD for ‘renovation’

Amarjot Kaur

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 29

If all goes well, Panjab University’s AC Joshi Library, the favourite haunt of city’s bibliophiles, will soon be renovated. A few days ago, librarian Jivesh Bansal, sent a proposal to the MHRD, demanding Rs 60 Lakh for conserving, renovating and maintain the heritage building.

If not for its architectural French connection with Pierre Jeanneret’s classic experiments with brutalism and minimalism, AC Joshi Library spells the cultural grandeur of its mighty legacy in the likes of Dr S Radhakrishnan and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru—the former, who laid its foundation stone in 1958 and the later who inaugurated it in 1963.

But for the hopeless romantics of the city, who like salvaging memories from the ravages of time, the library’s steady decay brings nothing, but pain. Named after the illustrious Vice-Chancellor of the University, the five-storyed library, which was established in the US Club, Shimla 1947 after the Partition, shifted to Chandigarh in 1955-56. With water seepage in the roofs of its reading halls, at walls near the washrooms on its first floor and the ceilings of its offices and magazine section, the library’s facade, made in red stone and concrete, is now but a sorry reflection of its past glory. However, that’s not the only predicament that ails the visitors at the library. The original entrance to the library’s porch, connecting it with the garden pathway of the Department of Chemical Engineering, has been blocked; quite contrary to Jeanneret’s idea of ‘functionality’ and ‘interactivity” between buildings. Apart from the neglected extended porch-roof of the library’s entrance, which is typical of Jeanneret’s style, that is now blackened and moisture-laden, another eyesore is the ‘red stone and concrete pathway’ that divides the empty pool along the palm tree stretch of the library and the Student Centre.