Chennai’s Easwari Lending Library preserves its storied legacy while evolving with technology

A young reader at Easwari Lending Library
| Photo Credit: SRINATH M

On the penultimate day of National Library Week (November 14-20), a visit to Easwari Lending Library in Gopalapuram, feels like a portkey to a wistful past. Archie’s double digests, Tintin and Asterix comics, and Perry Masons line the shelves of this library which began back in 1955. Amidst the silence, there is the occasional bargaining. “Ma, can I please take this copy of Captain Underpants? I haven’t read it yet,” asks Ibrahim. The request however, is denied. “You’ve already picked up your books for the week,” says his mother K Tasneem.

S Mukundan interrupts my tennis-match observation of pleas and instead asks me to pull up Easwari’s page on Instagram. The latest on their aesthetically curated feed is a strong recommendation for English historian William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. “Many people have already reserved the book and most are young teenagers. People have come to the library after checking out our social media recommendations,” says this third generation entrepreneur.

Easwari Lending Library’s evolution is one that requires documentation. What began as a scrap shop 69 years ago, evolved under the tenacity of founder N Palani who took about five and 10 paise for books that found their way to the junkyard. “It’s the original customers who built the library. While dropping scrap, they would tell him which books they wanted and my father began sourcing them. Book by book, this library got built,” says Palani’s son and Mukundan’s father P Satish Kumar.

Satish and his brother P Saravanan are intent on taking forward their father’s legacy. “I am not a voracious reader but people often come up to me and talk about my father. They remember him sitting in the library with his feet up, lost in a book that he has probably read many times over. Particularly Ponniyin Selvan,” he says.

P Satish Kumar and Mukudan at the Easwari Lending Library
| Photo Credit:
SRINATH M

A woman who wishes to be referred to as the ‘mad lady who reads’ chimes in at this juncture and says that Easwari’s collection has vastly expanded over time. She has held on to a membership since it was a three-digit database. “I used to help Palani sir move the books to the warehouse across Avvai Shanmugam Road when it used to rain as the library would flood. It has been a sheer effort to keep these places up and running,” she says.

It is his father’s recommendations and the relationships he has built that keep people coming back to the Easwari chain spread over eight locations with over 80,000 customers and an active rotation of six lakh books. “I’m not sure how much credit we can take but people, especially those who move abroad, tell us that we have made an impact on their lives. They take pictures at the doorstep and still maintain their membership in some manner,” Satish adds.

Today, he says his son and the staff are carrying forward the recommendations. Reading trends have changed. Parents are intent on ensuring that their children have reduced screen time. Libraries have hence been pivotal in changing this. “People have also been coming up to us and asking us for books like Dune which have been made into films. They know that the details lie in the pages. Also, gone are the days of Enid Blyton, he adds. Everyone wants to read Geronimo Stilton instead,” says Mukundan.

Ibrahim and Ayesha picking up a book at the library

Tasneem, a relatively new member, says that she and her children have been coming every week to the library because her children have been consuming books at a rapid pace recently. “It is very economical to come and pick books up here. Also, it prevents hoarding,” she says.

Eleven-year-old Ayesha and her brother Ibrahim say that the ability to pick any book of their choice is why they truly enjoy coming here. “We are only allowed to pick two books each. When we finish ours and get bored, we end up reading the books that our mother picks up. She likes writers like Elif Shafak and Chitra Banerjee [Divakaruni] but they are not very interesting to me. I like the anime books,” says Ayesha.

Ibrahim agrees. He adds that he has spent time at all the shelves in the library and enjoys getting lost amidst the detective books for adults. “I have been to every nook and even know where all the non-fiction books are,” he says.

It is why when his mother denies his dose of Captain Underpants novel for the week, he sneaks behind me and hides it in a shelf so that no one else gets to it. “Now, it will be mine for next week,” he grins.