Every evening for the past two weeks, Biju Balakrishnan has been setting forth in his Maruthi Alto, with its trunk loaded with books. Avid readers, young and old, in around seven panchayats in Parassala — located near the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border — wait eagerly for his mobile library to arrive on their doorstep.
With libraries downing shutters and people forced to stay indoors during the lockdown, the college professor is taking his home library to people.
Mr. Balakrishnan’s collection boasts of around 6,000 books, some of it from the collection started by his father, a teacher and a participant in the library movement.
Out of these, 2,500 books have already gone out into circulation in these two weeks.
“Since our house is located near a school at Karakkonam, children used to borrow books from us during vacations. But now, with the lockdown, they are unable to move around. Initially, some parents used to call us up and collect books from our home. That is when I struck upon the idea of distributing the books in my car. I leave home every day around 3.30 p.m. with a few hundred books and spend around 2 hours travelling around to distribute books,” says Mr. Balakrishnan who teaches at Sree Krishna College, Guruvayur.
Good variety
As a former employee of the Kerala State Institute of Languages, he has in his collection a number of the research books from the institution. Owing to his stint as a teacher in Kanyakumari, he also has a good grasp on Tamil and thus a collection of Tamil books, which are also in demand in the bordering villages.
“People associated with the local libraries in each place have been helping me by passing on the list of books needed and keeping a tab on the borrowers. I have begun digging into my old collections as almost all the new ones are in circulation. It is important that we use this period for nurturing reading,” he says.
