In the last year of my under-graduate studies, they
decided to build a new library in my college and clear out the old one
entirely. I mean – Entirely! And they decided to sell out everything to the
students who wanted them, at very cheap rates. That’s the good part, but then
they emptied all the shelves, hundreds of books onto the library floor in a
heap of pages, literature and precious records of human writings!
How could anyone permit such a desecration?
How could the college management not have stopped this
horror?
How could the librarian have stood by and watched this
entire event take place before her very eyes?
These were the most pressing questions weighing heavy upon
my heart as I stood at the entrance to the underground storage area with tears
rolling down my cheeks and blood oozing from my lower lip where I’d bitten it
to stop myself from screaming out aloud at this violation of the temple of
Education. My heart was wrenched in two as I walked into the chamber in a daze
of abject misery of the horror perpetrated within these halls. I saw torn
books, books without covers, shredded volumes, torn pages, unbound covers,
half-vanished collections and scribbled manuscripts lying around. It was a
scene of carnage and reminded me of the battle of Zutphen. Just as Sir Philip
Sidney, the torch of English literature in his age was killed that day, the
works of countless other authors and poets were layed to waste in that library.
I could even for a moment of despair compare it to the destruction of the
library at Alexandria or the book burnings in Nazi Germany.
Some of the other literature students who’d come along with
me were also shocked at the amount of destruction that could befall a library
that was the pride of the college in its heyday. It was unimaginable how much
destruction could take place when you come to think about it and I wonder if I
had not witnessed the fall of literature, an event that took place only a few
times in human history. This was indeed a day that will live in infamy and will
always remain one of my most disturbing experiences in life. People who do not
read or write or have much to do with literature may think that I’m
over-reacting, but ask a true bookworm, they will tell you that my pain is as
real as the pain at the death of a family member.
However, some of the other literature students and I managed
to get few of the books to safety, but that story is for another time perhaps.
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