A library that opened a new world
When I was a school-going boy in the ’70s, I started visiting Chatterjee Public Library located near the Nagori Gate, Hisar. Its owner was an old gentleman, Babu Atmaram Chatterjee. He was fair-complexioned, of medium height, and almost 80 years old. I always saw him dressed neatly in a Nehru jacket, kurta and pyjamas. He wore Gandhi-style spectacles, with simple round lenses, and used hearing aid to communicate. When luck smiles on us, we meet good people. He oozed gentleness in every word he spoke, and everybody fondly addressed him as ‘Bauji’.
When I met him for the first time, he asked me my name. ‘Quite nice, quite nice,’ he remarked, and then, paused, groping into a small bag lying on the table. He took out an apple. ‘Please, accept it and munch on it merrily!’ In those formative years, my knowledge of Queen’s English and urban etiquettes was poor. When I finished eating the delicious apple, Bauji looked at me quizzically, as if he expected me to say something. But I remained quiet. ‘Never forget these magic words — ‘thank you’ and ‘please’!’ I folded my hands and thanked him.
I had come from an obscure village, where children were never taught to thank indulgent family elders or relatives when they got sweets or fruits from them to eat. Rather, they would continue standing and staring, avidly waiting to be served once more!
When Bauji asked me what my aim in life was, being a prattler, I told him it was to be a writer. I saw a flicker of interest in his eyes, ‘Good, very good! Why don’t you become a member of the library then? We charge only Rs 20 per head annually.’ I was sad to tell him the truth. I didn’t even have that amount. To my great surprise, he assured me, ‘Don’t worry, I will enroll you as a member without any subscription fee. But you will have to submit a short summary of every book you borrow from me.’
He lent me hundreds of books in English and corrected spellings and grammatical mistakes of my submitted abstracts. Bauji firmly believed, ‘Many of us argue like helpless flibbertigibbets without reading good books!’ He encouraged me to contribute my short stories and poems for a Hindi magazine, Vishwa Jyoti, edited by Sant Ram, a leading figure of the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal of Lahore — founded in 1922 — from Hoshiarpur in Punjab. Sant Ram had invited Dr BR Ambedkar to read out his famous paper, ‘The Annihilation of Caste’, at the mandal’s Lahore conference in 1936. Bauji grew sad, referring to the historical fact that Baba Saheb was urged to dilute the contents of his proposed speech, but he declined to do so and cancelled his visit. Later, Sant Ram translated it into Hindi.
Babu Atmaram was a great admirer of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar, and a friend of Sant Ram. He is no more, but his beloved library, now known as Chatterjee Memorial Library, has survived the ravages of time.
