Are libraries going extinct?

With Google and Wikipedia at our fingertips, why do we need libraries? Are those spacey, architectural behemoths facing extinction?

With these thoughts, I climbed the steps of the New York Public Library. The light was starting to dim, people were crowding department stores and many were striving to see the Christmas tree next doors. Everything was festive around us as we stepped into the austereness of the library.

After traversing through the Periodical Room and the Wachenheim Gallery we settled on the 2nd floor outside the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. I put the shopping bags down and with a loud sigh sat on the chair. The young man next to me imitated, mockingly.

For me, libraries have always been a retreat, a respite from things around. This relationship started on warm afternoons in a town in northern India, where I would make my way to the coolness of the library. It sat on top of a plateau, its windows providing views of the town.

At that library, the librarian Mr. Pariyal was consistently unwelcoming. Once past his scowl, I would let the slanted wooden shelf draw me towards its exotic magazines—Time, Life, Discover and National Geographic amongst many others.

In that peaceful setting, I would read about Leonid Brezhnev, discover Mayan Treasures, and let Henri Cartier Bresson freeze my gaze with his images.

Next, in Mumbai, the college library spread its awkward torso in front of me. Surrounded by books on obsolete accounting rules, I looked around for what’s on every seventeen-year old boy’s mind—romance. The library was a place for serious students and this facade worked well in my adolescent endeavor.

Next, in New England, it took a few days for me to figure that access to money precedes the act of satisfying hunger. So, I opted to roam the bookshelves with stacks of barcodes, slapping on dusty books that had not been touched in generations, in the midst sliding down and reading some.

Later years, took me to the British Library, the Bibilotheque de Sorbonne and finally to the Library of Congress—the access card of which I still carry in my wallet.

In an age of book stores where smiling faces of people stare at you from book covers and one is expected to buy a cappuccino, the library holds a unique place in our society, the world over.

Libraries are unwanting, and unselfish. They are perhaps the last remnants of places that give without seeking. [Ok, so you have to return the book on time.]

In an age when little ones grow-up with interactive toys and have access to numerous TV channels, libraries should be nurtured for their ability to contain one’s attention.

That evening at the New York Public Library, I walked and occasionally passed a stranger. Then, I heard a child’s voice. Peering through the bookshelves, I saw my son across, talking to the pictures in the pages of a National Geographic. I decide not to hush him.

He had after all found what I came to show him in the library—an ability to calm down while converging all of one’s senses in the folds of a book. Aha, I tell myself, there is hope! May be one day, in a library, he will discover the images of Henri Cartier Bresson, sift through old, untouched books, find an occupation within those structures that would take him to his next step, may be even a romantic interlude when he is seventeen? Perhaps.

(A version of this column first appeared in India Abroad.)