The Reading Habit - Final

How the Library came about

Here's another perplexing item on the Central Library. The land on which it is being built was first acquired on behalf of the Education Department. It was later transferred to the Directorate of Art & Culture (DAC) – I am not sure if at that point in time, the Education Department also sold them the idea (at the behest of a certain master puppeteer; after all departments don't think, they just do) of building the Central Library.

But, you can bet your hard earned money on the fact that the same genius working from the Porvorim Secretariat decided everybody would be better off if the DAC were made the motivators of the plan that was about to unfurl. So, you now have a ground plus six floors building under construction, each floor, I estimated from the plans to be 2100 m2 per floor. That's a huge 14,700 M2 for the grand edifice!

Knowledge Society

You think? Nah. Rest assured our politicians have no intention whatsoever of turning us into a Knowledge Society. The band of voracious readers will simply have to discard their reading habit when the old Central Library is eventually moved from the conveniently located Institute Menezes Braganza to difficult-to-access Patto Plaza. Ironically for the lettered men, women and kids who go to absorb knowledge clearly the writing is on the wall.

From my reading of the plans, the ground floor of the building is almost wasted and appears to be entirely a utilities area. It has a basement too. Ground Floor: It has a 50 M2 kitchen and a 77 M2 dinning hall. The remaining space in the floor has a transformer room and 2 toilets, and will be taken up to house offices for the DAC. Remember, I said each floor had an area of 2,100m2 . Floor 1: Has two more offices 139 M2 and 280 M2 in size, atrium space of 139 M2 (in other words wasted) an entrance lobby of 281 M2, an exhibition hall of 210 M2 and wonder of wonders, a bookshop of 68 M2. Do you think, the planners of this hoax on you, could have made this a wee bit smaller? But, the good news is there are loos a dime a dozen on every floor.

The Maze Continues

Floor II: It has 3 library areas – 422 M2, 136 M2, 421 M2. An exhibition hall (no size mentioned), a lecture room 139 M2 in size and a mobile+taluka+circulating libraries (this is exactly how it is described in the plans) of 281 M2. There are also two huge unmeasured spaces called 'void' in the plans. Floor III: It has a Konkani and Marathi library section of 492 M2 which purposefully I think was not bifurcated. No prizes for guessing why. And if you didn't know, silly, it is because you won't find any Konkani books there eventually. That's also why the Hindi section is as large as 492M2. And, guess who is going to read books in Hindi? There are spaces called 'technical' and one called 'storage.' Check this out. There is a rest room for peons, a rest room for female staff and a rest room for male staff. And I am talking loos here, if you think American and imagine rest room means a loo. There are more large offices of every kind imaginable and two waiting rooms. Floor IV: It is entirely a library. Floor V: Half this floor has been divided up into a local history section and a reference section. I am not sure about the other half because the floor plan does not say anything about this area. Or, I was not meant to understand it. Attic: Has a section called 'scholars' among other library sections.

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