I am still seated in the Anna Centenary Library while I write this; in the fourth floor, B wing to be precise. An extraordinary conversation took place here sometime ago; let me recapitulate whatever happened.
The tawny-white, ergonomic book-racks stood tall around me, while I was writing away in my note-pad, and as I looked up for some inspiration, in a tangled garble of voices, I could make out, each rack saying “try my lot”. From my reading table, I gazed at the rack closest to me; ‘Journals of Ayn Rand’ and ‘The Greatest Works of Kahlil Gibran’ caught my sight, and returned it with regal disdain. I walked a couple of steps to the rack and bent down to take a closer look when I heard a raspy, cigarette-stained voice of a woman. It was Ayn Rand’s.
“Don’t pick me,” she said, “You are too mundane to understand, leave alone appreciate, the concepts of Objectivism and public welfare.” I winced, and tried to frame in my mind, the words that would sum up to the fact that I was indeed a great fan of her philosophies, but was just yet another man lost in the myriad trivialities of everyday citizenship.
“Don’t mind Ms. Rand please”, called out a deep, male voice from near. It was Kahlil Gibran. “And kindly tell me sire, what about this talk between the racks, that they are moving us elsewhere?”
“Yes, I can tell you.” I told him tenderly, “The Chief Minister thinks your fraternity does not deserve this place. Soon, this building is going to become a centre that is going to cure children diseases.”
Kahlil Gibran stared at me meditatively, and after what seemed like ages, told me – “What do you think this place is already trying to do, respected sire? Each of us here, have been congregated here, to provide the best possible treatment to the maladies of the mind, and to provide company of ineffable worth, to the lonely, troubled and orphaned.”
“Tell your Chief Minister anyway,” said Ayn Rand with asperity, cutting through Kahlil Gibran’s blanketing cadence,
“That we won’t move from this place, and she can employ the entire force of her powers and obscurantism on us, if she wishes.” Immediately, I heard the Babel of voices around me again; and the world’s most revered writers, existing in their most pristine forms, chanted – “We won’t move, we love here!”
As I looked around helplessly, someone wizened beckoned to me; his appearance was genial and sober – it was R.K. Narayan. “Forgive my family,” he said, his voice trembling a little, “They are troubled and they don’t know what to do. This place is heaven for us and we don’t want to move, save us please!”
I cringed within, but merely nodded to the abstemious appeal and came back to my desk. The Anna Centenary Library, with its seven floors, fourteen wings and more than half a million mummified minds, seduced the bibliophile in me like no other place or library had in the past. I have spent hours here – reading, writing, thinking, researching, updating my notes, and even snoozing a little bit. With its inspiring aura of intellectual sanctity, this place had helped maintain my mental equilibrium through my several inquests. I would be definitely and infinitely bereaved if this place went, but what could I, a mere common man, do, if no other site in this city is as super-special and healing as this?
