Recently, a friend sent me a photograph of a note I had written to her over two decades ago. Overly dramatic and despondent, I complain how my education has alienated me from my immediate world. I end my note with the lines, “I only have a vague idea of who I want to be and what I want to do.” Re-reading this my friend asked me, “Have you been able to build on the vague sense of who you want to be?”
I thought about this and felt my answer was “YES”. But I decided to stay with this question and think about factors that shape our sense of identity. What is it that helps one ‘become’ a certain kind of person? Education plays a part. The place you come from, the people you grow up with, work with and spend time with play a part in equal measure. Books you read and stories you listen to also shape us. I’ve often felt my professional work is a big part of my identity too. But I realised something else. We become someone in relation to the world around us. This year, travel expanded my world.
Travel for many is synonymous with pleasure and fun. We travel for leisure, to take a break from the rigamarole of our daily lives. For the wanderlust amongst us, we may travel to explore a place, or a community different from ours. But ‘work travel’ is usually different. We set out with definite goals and deliverables. Our work days may be chequered with meetings and discussions. Library work at Bookworm has given me many opportunities to travel extensively in the last few years. In hindsight I see that library work travel is different. This has been affirming for me in a way that I didn’t anticipate. Pico Iyer, a writer I ardently followed as a younger person, says,
“We travel initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed.”
Why We Travel (2000)
How true! My library travel is playing a vital role in finding myself and ‘becoming’ a certain kind of person.
Last year library work enabled me to travel every month of the year, from the north to the south, from the west to the east. What a privilege this has been! Yesterday, as unseasonal rains swept across Mumbai city, the glistening green around me and the smell of wet soil evoked memories of rains I experienced in 2024. I suddenly realised that I had a rain-laced memory from almost every trip.
The first memory that came sparkling through was of another unexpected shower in February 2024, in faraway Siwan in Bihar. I was at Takshila Education Society’s Parivartan Campus, with my dear friend and educator, Sujata, facilitating the Libraries: Purpose and Practice 2024 Workshop for librarians and educators. All of us had travelled long distances to come together in this diverse, inclusive gathering to learn more about libraries. The workshop typically ends with a pop-up library in a village that is set up by the participants. Held under the open sky, usually in a village square, it brings together children from local communities for a dynamic few hours, filled with stories, games and art. A day prior to our scheduled pop-up, the rain gods made an unexpected appearance, threatening to wash away our plans and enthusiasm. Imagine our relief when every group packed up the last book without a drop of rain interrupting library work. Travel prepares us for the unexpected and helps us become more flexible. It also forges new pathways.
March 2024 reminded me that I didn’t have to travel far away to witness library magic. Along with Sujata, I went to hopeful library spaces at Sajag, Kalyan and Parcham, Thane, who were participating organisations in the Library Mentoring Support Program 2023 (LMS) led by Bookworm and supported by the H.T. Parekh Foundation. Travelling within my city reiterated for me the need and potential that library work has for children in urban spaces. Travelling to these libraries showed me how lonely library work can be and therefore how transformative a mentoring program can be, when there is readiness and interest to learn. Travel connects us.
April took me back to Goa. We welcomed over forty Tibetan language teachers and librarians for a historic Reading Helpers Workshop in collaboration with LEC alumna and Tibet DoE member, Sonam Gangsang. Historic because Tibetan teachers travelled to Goa from all four corners of India and together we thought about a refreshing new approach to teach literacy in our classrooms and libraries. The teachers’ open-ness and curiosity to learn taught me that we are never too old to unlearn and re-learn. Sonam’s trust in Bookworm was quiet but strong and it kept us going. I realised it was a relationship that had been built and nurtured over many trips, trainings and conversations with Sujata. Travel builds, cements and sustains relationships.
Were there showers? Yes! One morning, we decided to do a recce of the Bambolim Beach Resort for the Library Educator’s Certificate 2024 (LEC) which was going to be scheduled later in the year. I still remember being greeted by huge white foaming waves leaping at the conference hall glass windows. Before we knew it there was a downpour. Unseasonal rain again. Or Showers of Blessing? Little did I know then, but we had already found our venue for LEC 2024. Defenceless against the rain, we sat down and watched the beautiful showers. Travel slows us down when we least expect it – helping us pause and prepare for what is to come.
May was bereft of showers but it was raining books! I had the opportunity to show my colleagues from Goa around the city. I travelled across book stores in Mumbai with Vishwanath and Sneha, perusing, reading, browsing and buying books. In a long queue at Crosswords, seeing my basket full of books, someone asked me, “Are you buying books for a library?” Imagine my joy when I proudly said “Yes, Bookworm Library” and the person said, “Oh! I know about Bookworm and the amazing work you do!” The work we do at Bookworm is precious and it is recognised across the country. Travel gave me new eyes to look at our own work.
June, July, August and September renewed the promise of monsoons, and old and new library partners. Melcom and I travelled to the Shodhak Library by Navnirmiti Trust in Mumbai, new participants of LMS 2024. We walked through a drizzle, crossed a highway and headed into the heart of Phule Nagar, Powai. The library was small but lively, bustling with energy. Children wanted to read, enact, play and Pooja the librarian was eager to learn. They talked about Ambedkar and Phule and how much they know because of the library. Yes, Ideas can thrive and reading can grow, because of libraries!
Our visits to Pune, Coimbatore and later to Patna to meet our old partner librarians at the Delhi Public School (DPS) also confirmed this. Being in these libraries, observing library classes and interacting with children buoyed my spirits. It is in the smallest of actions and smallest of shifts that library work grows – open, organised shelves, self-checkout by children, librarians enthusiastically suggesting books and nurturing readers. These visits helped me view practices in our own libraries in a fresh light and strengthen our libraries in small measure. Were we looking at library cards carefully and shaping children’s reading journeys well? Were our shelves in order and were they regularly refreshed? Children were reading in our libraries – were we capturing books read in the library effectively? Travel helped me look at work in our own libraries afresh.
I traversed the skies between Mumbai and Goa multiple times in between to be a part of the Introduction to Libraries Workshop, the Library Educators Certificate and to continue my work with the Bookworm library team. Being a part of this team, I often felt surges of creative and intellectual energy. The rush of library joy dimmed any feelings of physical tiredness that travel may have brought.
In December, Anandita and I made our way to DPS Ludhiana in the far northwest. We spent time with the librarian and LEC participant, Monika. The cold winter mornings and the beautiful marigold flowers on campus are a hazy memory. But what sticks out clearly as a beautiful memory though is our Readers’ Theatre activity with grade 9 students. In their sonorous voices, they read a play script, The Christmas Truce – stopping to ask questions and understand the historical context. As we reached the end of the script, they realised that they had the same story in their English course work too – but how much more joyful this shared experience of the story had been! We could see the seeds of reading that Monika had sown, were slowly germinating across grades – in powerful ways. I learnt from Monika the power of a single, focused and passionate library educator. How much attention she paid to the space, the collection, the interactions and most importantly to the children! She was everywhere – alert, vigilant and present. That evening when we stepped out for some delicious aloo tikki chaat, a steady drizzle accompanied us…unseasonal again! I thought about how the world around us remains unpredictable and we must be prepared for the unexpected – at all times, just like Monika.
Travel can be heady. It makes you do things you otherwise would not do in your everyday life – catch that early morning flight, read vociferously, stay up late & complete reports, chat with your colleagues, juggle sightseeing amidst the work day, try some new cuisine and maybe even go shopping! I used to wonder if I enjoy traveling because it makes me feel more alive. But as I write this piece, I realise I travel for many reasons. Travel is helping me become a person in this world, of this world – not alienated from the world anymore.
I must confess every time I left my homestead, there was some trepidation and some sadness – about the people I would miss, my routine which would go askew, the emails that would go unanswered, unfiled reports that were piling up. And yet, once I was on the road, all this slid into the background – being in libraries, interacting with librarians, holding sessions with children, organising the collection, discussions with my colleagues – all this kept me focused. This year of travel sharpened my thinking, quickened my physical pace and made me a kinder human. It humbled me. It made me value my family – who supported me and also grew more independent because I was away. My time away also made them value my presence in their lives – what a wonderful unintended consequence of travel that was! I valued team work even more now – a big thanks to my colleagues who travelled with me and those who held different pieces of work while I was away.
Rain again in Siwan, Bihar when we were back at Parivartan for Libraries: Purpose and Practice 2025 in March would have been a full circle moment. Alas! This was not the case – and perhaps that was good. The number of times I encountered unseasonal rain in different parts of the country is alarming – all signs of immense climate change. But I want to end with a memory of March showers that cooled the earth, cleared the air and cleaned away the dust – helping us get ready for the opening of our fourth library in Goa and first in South Goa. Travel renews hope and this time the unseasonal rain definitely beckoned a new beginning.
To my colleagues at Bookworm, who may hesitate to travel, I want to say, we are so lucky to work in an organisation that enables us to travel so widely and always so comfortably. These opportunities are valuable because they can teach us so many things about the world but also about ourselves. 2024 allowed me to grow because of the people I met, the stories I witnessed and the relationships I built. It showed me the power of libraries as democratic, free spaces at a time when such spaces are rapidly shrinking. Thank you to the leadership at Bookworm Trust who have invested so much and enabled people like me to continue becoming humane educators in an unequal and competitive world.
