MADURAI: Loud upbeat music echoed through the streets of Karadipatti village and multicoloured lights were strung up on houses in Ambedkar Colony, Madurai district. The hamlet, with 100 Scheduled Caste families, was in a celebratory mode, and for once, it was not for the usual temple festival.
A huge painting of Babasaheb Ambedkar greets visitors at the entrance of their newly-built library, illustrated by a 31-year-old artist V Saran Raj and his friends. Murals of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Little Prince, and D Jayakanthan usher children inside the single-room building. Readers can choose from 1,900 books, the only ones the colony has owned.
The colony was ecstatic they have a library and the paintings. Something the settlement never had until April 2021, the 130th birth anniversary of Ambedkar. In January 2021, Saran posted on social media platforms: a call to donate books. The shelves of what would soon become Ambedkar Library rapidly filled with 1,500 books from strangers and friends alike. Neelam Cultural Center and Vaasagar Saalai in Chennai also sent free magazines. By April, the library was open to visitors.
This library hopes to help children like S Dharshini studying in Class X — who get to see books only in classrooms — initiate a conversation with the world. “We don’t have libraries nearby and this was the only source of reading apart from textbooks,” she said. The only other library in the area has not seen the light of day.
As a child, Saran remembers the first time he saw a government school library, “I was in Class IV or V when I saw it and I was awestruck. But I was not able to access it regularly. I read the Bible every day for four years. It was the only literature I knew until I went to Chennai to study,” he said.
In 2013, Saran joined the Government College of Fine Arts in Chennai to pursue painting, becoming the first arts graduate in the vicinity. “The capital city opened the gates to a wider world. I attended literary meetings, learned about books and writers. But, it was the words of my teacher Chandru Gurusamy that gave me the perspective. He said observing society is base for understanding words.”
“It took me more than 10 years to get to know the world of books and it helped me better understand the society. I don’t want the children in my village to take yet another 10 years to understand that or to lose out on opportunities,” Saran said.
With the onset of the pandemic, Saran’s journey towards understanding the world better seemed to hit a roadblock. After nearly nine years, he returned to Ambedkar Colony for 13 endless months. He watched children being sent to cotton mills to earn Rs 300 a day.
“I thought adults would do anything for money. But during the lockdown, I began to see things from their shoes. Their actions were merely based on their needs and they are not to be blamed for it,” he stated. It was then Saran decided Karadipatti village needed a library.
But not all residents are welcoming of the library. Saran’s family, who were supportive of his dreams, have been facing threats from the village caste Hindus. “For the first time, a picture of Ambedkar was painted on a wall in this village. This very act irked them,” said a resident who wished to be unnamed. The direct and indirect threats forced them to shut shop for over three months.
However, the library has been re-opened and Saran hopes to conduct workshops and events in the future. He also hopes to construct a building exclusively for the library someday, as he rents the current room.
So, what kept him going despite all the odds? “I was the one who had the opportunity to learn. If not for me, who else would do it? I don’t force anyone to read here. I am merely creating an open space and I leave everything else to the readers’ interpretation.”