Florence Library: The Place of a Thousand Stories and Where My Story Began (A Guest Post by Kunal Bhattacharya)

 Kunal Bhattacharya is a dynamo of a kid I met in Bookline one day just by chance. We struck up a conversation and I was immediately impressed by the maturity in him. He was silent and he was listening, while me being me, I was blabbering.

 Since that day, Kunal and I have struck up an uncommonly rewarding friendship, whereupon he and I talk on a regular basis and have been moderating rooms on Clubhouse on weekends.

 Why should you care about Kunal? Let me show you something he wrote back in the day, that he nervously shared with me via WhatsApp. Let him speak, and let me step aside.

 The Bilge Master

 If there is one place that has shaped my childhood and made me into who I am today it would be the Florence Library in Alabama USA. I remember how my mom would drive me to the Library every Saturday and Sunday in our beat-up Plymouth Voyager. It was my only real source of entertainment since my dad was a struggling student and couldn’t afford a TV or a cable connection and our neighbourhood wasn’t the best for making friends, especially for a scrawny Asian kid who looked like a white boy. 

 The library was a magical place for me. You think you know the beauty of a library, but let me tell you that no library in India that I have visited can even hold a candle to Florence Library .

 The entire library floor was coved with carpets and for my 4-year-old self the shelves seemed impossibly tall. There was a special smell around the place, a smell that made you feel like this was where you truly belonged. My favourite part however, was the reading corner. There were massive indoor trees (artificial as I would later realise) under which were beanbags of every colour of the rainbow. They were a collage of greens, blues and reds which may seem garish to the eyes of an adult but to my 4-year-old self it was simply perfect.

 I would sit under the warm yellow light that the library seemed to be suffused with and lose myself in the world of Franklin the Turtle, Green Eggs and Ham and Bob the Builder. 

 When it was finally time to leave, I would beg my mother for just a few more minutes, clinging to her legs and crying. Sometimes she would give in and we would spend another few minutes that would turn into hours in that book filled utopia. 

 My love of books can be traced back to those hours spent in the library every weekend for 5 years. It must also be said that without my mother I probably would never have gotten into reading. While she had a hundred other things to do, she would always make time to drop me at the library every weekend. She would borrow 15 books every week from the library (the librarian undoubtedly bent a few rules to allow us to borrow that many) and over the week would read to me during breakfast, my evening soft boiled egg, dinner and right before bed. At that point my mom was pretty much supporting our family all alone since my dad would be in college most of the day. My mother still found the time to read to me.

 These daily sessions were undoubtedly where my bibliophile tendencies sprung from and they hold a special place in my heart. One of my greatest wishes is for me to one day be able to visit Florence Library again for it is a place of a thousand stories and where my story began.