Few visitors, insect-infested books, Gurdaspur district library set for a makeover this year
Ravi Dhaliwal
Gurdaspur, April 9
A library is a building where ideas are born, a place where history comes alive. This adage, however, no longer applies to the district library as its body, soul and spirit to survive are fast being devoured by termites in dark and dingy rooms.
Here, Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ is at war with the elements. This magnum opus is representative of what 57,444 other books, many of them all-time classics, are going through.
These classics, which are placed in a ramshackle room, continue to fight insects and government apathy.
With lack of funds being parroted as an excuse in the past for the structure to not be repaired, local resident and Punjab Health Systems Corporation (PHSC) Chairman Raman Bahl took it upon himself to breathe life into the dying entity. He opened channels with the state government and this paid dividends.
“The government has now released funds to the tune of Rs 36.36 lakh. You do not have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them, like it is happening here,” he says.
Not long ago, there were 3,500 lifetime members of the library. “These numbers are fast dwindling,” says Rupinder Kaur, library restorer.
Concessions like reducing the Rs 500 lifetime fee to Rs 100 for non-students and not taking money from students are not helping the cause.
Instead of filling up vacant posts, District Language Officer Dr Paramjit Singh Kalsi has been given the additional charge of the librarian. “The entity is not dead, it is sick and is gradually being nursed back to health,” he says.
The single-storey structure is now being rebuilt as a double-storeyed one with a conference hall being added on the top floor. The construction work is being undertaken by the PWD and will be completed before the year ends.
Barely 10-12 readers turn up every day at the library, a far cry from the past when the rush was such that there used to be no room to sit and read for a major part of the day.
