The Chamber of the Unabridged Secrets

“One of my oldest memories of school is walking past the school library and wondering what the world inside looked like. You see, as a 3^rd grade student we had only newly acquired the privilege to stand in the school’s main assembly ground. Getting into the school library was a very far cry back then.

During our library period, our librarian would bring certain comic books and magazines that she deemed fit for reading at our age. I must say, her choice wasn’t very imaginative. But it was probably the best way I could enter into the world of words and the puzzles that authors would create weaving one word into another.

Grade 5 – I finally get to see the insides of the library. Back then it was on the second floor of the main block. Books piled high onto shelves ten times my size. I can still recall the loud gasp I let out, wondering how to reach that top shelf in the reference section that had that one encyclopedia on butterflies (and other insects) that I so badly wanted to see. Library visits in this class was really fun. It was the second best thing that was going on my life. The first one being the privilege to finally use pens instead of pencils, obviously!

Grade 6 – I was thoroughly obsessed with spending all of my existence in the library. But I wasn’t allowed to; because like any other ‘cookie cutter’ education system, reading for pleasure was only an activity to be done on the 6^th period of Wednesdays every week. But the stubborn (PS. Read ‘enterprising’) person that I am, I figured out a loop hole for this too.

You see, I was one of those few ‘privileged’ kids who did the ‘first’ trips to school. Waking up at 5.20 am to leave from home at 5.45 and reach school by 6.15 is a feat only a chosen few can claim for themselves. I was one of these chosen few! This meant that after forty minutes of playing catch with our water bottles, running across the corridors and yelling at the top of our lungs in the school ground, we still had twenty more glorious minutes before the bell for the morning school assembly rang.

Guess what I would do with this time? I would wait, outside the library, for the librarian, to come, and to open the portals of fairy tales and Hardy Boys for me! Every day, the librarian would be subtly pissed and impressed at me at the same time and remark, ‘Ah it’s you again!’

I would only get barely fifteen minutes to read in peace, but man that is probably the highest high I have ever felt.

Grade 7 – I have effectively finished every imaginable edition of Hardy Boys. I even remember writing a whole alternative fan fiction with me as Nancy Drew, herein a smarter cousin of the Hardy Boys. Fairy tales don’t impress me anymore. I tried Goosebumps and gave up immediately. Why did my school have 66 editions of this ghoulish literature anyway? God alone knows!

Grade 8 – Shakespeare is just barely being mentioned in my classes. I am still traumatized by the images in my Biology textbook and viola; I discover an entirely new section of the library. It was always in plain sight, but never quite caught the eye. This section was called – the chamber of the unabridged secrets. These were literature from the times when ‘you have bewitched me, mind, body and soul’ was an appropriate, nay, the most appropriate pick up line! I was finally coming across books that would need me to always carry a dictionary to understand why the protagonist was so much in agony.

Another important sub plot to the story, 8^th grade meant book borrowing privileges. But hey, only one at a time! So I would read one book in the morning in those fifteen minutes before the assembly and the weekly library periods (now on Friday btw) and carry another book home.

By the time I graduated from school in my 10^th grade, I knew every book in the ‘chamber of unabridged secrets’ like the back of my hand. But there is always that one last hurrah left before you leave a place right! I had to give back something to this place that I could walk around in my sleep.

Over the years, I had noticed a lot of areas where our library could improve. But I never knew what to do about it. Then came 9^th grade awakening! I was scoring really well on those essays and letters we write for the English language exam. I was like; why not put my newly acquired super power to use!

So I wrote, an anonymous letter, to the principal of my school, stating changes we could bring about to make the library a little more welcoming than before. I dropped it in the suggestion box and waited. Two weeks later, school cabinet meeting happened. Our principal came to the hall and said, ‘Today I have something interesting to share with you!’

Then he went on to narrate how he found this anonymous letter in the suggestions box, how pleased he was with the recommendations and what all the management was willing to implement. I swear I felt like a gangster that day. To this day, none of my batch mates know that it was me!

But for you Holy Angels’ kids out there, those reading stands you see in there tucked away nicely on the right corner of the library (which is now on the ground floor btw), consider them a parting gift from a little 3^rd grader who once walked past her school library, wondering what the world inside looked like.”

*mic drop

If you have reached till here, you know I won’t leave this story without a moral. So here it is! As a student, I was living in a system that had in place, rules and regulations that guided my every move. But as the free birds that we all truly are, there were obstacles on the way to truly discover where my passions lay. Slowly and steadily, with every privilege I got, I used it to my advantage to get things I wanted. Slowly and steadily, as the years passed by, I also started to see where the system worked and where it didn’t. Then came 9^th grade awakening. You see the letter that I wrote, modern day social action theories call this method ‘written advocacy’. In this we make use of words, by writing petitions and PILs and whatever necessary to make the decision makers know where the system is falling short and where to improve.

So many changes have come across in our country, primarily by the power of the pen. So this is what I want to say to you. Over the years you must have come across loop holes in the system that really irks you. While building awareness is one method to call upon attention, written advocacy is another extremely powerful weapon. I urge you to start learning how to file an RTI petition, file in those PILs; use the privilege that you have acquired over the years to truly bring the change you desire. Because when the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.

*and the mic drops again!

PPS. That last line is not mine! It’s from Malala Yousafzai

Good day!