Presence and Absence
This we Have Now by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief or joy. Not a judging state, or an elation, or sadness. Those come and go. This is the presence that doesn’t. My presence has been to be absent from Bookworm for the past month and as […]
Library Educator’s Course English 2017 – Closing Ceremony
Play and Performance have been significant parts of the Library Educator’s Course. The graduating batch of LEC 2017, English under the direction of Alia Sinha put up a closing performance of the LEC Course for the closing ceremony. The remarkable aspect of this performance is that it was co constructed and imagined by each and […]
Lap Time Baby Time
On the Saturday morning pre – school sessions at Bookworm, I am known to work from home or creep up the stairs to avoid engagement. Deepali who holds this session does it remarkably well and I considered myself done with little ones. For years – as far back as I can I have worked with […]
Questions and Answers
So, Bookworm continues to reside in popular memory as a children’s library. A hole – in – the – wall that has some books for lending. No questions asked here. As awareness increases and one begins to understand the scale of our outreach work and the number of children who get a systematic, creative library […]
Watching a Community Library Begin
It is Sunday morning. We have rain in short bursts that render the green and the red sharper to the eye. I walk through a narrow lane, escaping a large buffalo ( if the buffalo would write, he might say the same thing!) and approach a plastic covered verandah. A low hum of voices […]
Teaching with Cultural Diversity
Our classrooms are expected to be diverse. In our Libraries in Schools program, we carefully and very intentionally select our schools on a criteria of diversity and then proceed to embrace this range of utter un-uniformity. The ethos of ‘access to all’ is made real by choosing schools with a high density of children coming […]
The Library Effect
The summer break seems interminable for some children. The heat and the chores of the day are broken by the library opening time. Look outs watch for the team as either a bike or a car or van from Bookworm pull into the lane. Languid young boys struggling to grow up fast into men, watch […]
Stitching in the park
Every summer, Bookworm privileges working with needle and thread as a way to keep the craft alive but also to collaborate around stitching. In the past, Bookworm has initiated ‘godri’ – quilts as a collaborative initiative as well as collaborative story panels – using motifs hand stitched by various people around memory and story. Bookworm […]
In and Out of the Library System
I have been on the margins of the Government system for all of my life – both personal and professional until the last decade. It is a comfortable, easy place to stand and watch and intersect when and if necessary, driven always by my own needs. My Professional intersections have begun to grow more robust […]
An Open House
Ruth Krauss in her book Open House for Butterflies illustrated with Maurice Sendak writes, Everybody should be quiet Near a little stream and listen Today, I had that joy, not near a stream but within the library – my idea of a stream and I listened to the excited voices of 45 school teachers and […]