A Library in Jaffna
Shareeq is too young to remember much of the civil war years in Sri Lanka (1983-2009). But for another patron, 75-year-old Rajenthiran Selvanayagam, spending time at the library is a peaceful contrast to that era. He lost his wife to the war. His son went mad. Selvanayagam visits the library three times a week. “Having a book in my hand,” he says, “is more than meditation to me.”
An old report on NPR about the library in a once war-torn land. It captures the emotional and cultural significance of the rebuilt library in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, destroyed during the years of conflict.
And what books should such a rebuilt library stock? The authorities, wealthy donors, and patrons themselves — all have different ideas. This concept was neatly explored in the short story Renewals by Romesh Gunasekara. Management and technology books from the US, agricultural development books from the UK, “micro-finance and all,” poems from the world’s classics — including Dante’s Inferno in Italian the original Italian — what is it to be? Do read this short story Renewals if you can. It is a little gem.
Also listen to Writer Sujatha’s Oru Laksham Pusthakangal written in the immediate aftermath of the burning of the library with its vaunted 100,000 books. This is a Tamil short story imagines the emotional aftermath of the burning, “which continued unchecked for two nights.”
A Sri Lankan Tamil, haunted by this loss, attempts to speak about it at a literary event in Madras. The story explores censorship, grief, and the symbolic weight of books as vessels of memory and resistance.
“On midnight 31st May 1981, the Jaffna Public Library, famous for being the crucible of Tamil literature and heritage, was set ablaze by Sri Lankan security forces and state-sponsored mobs.”
“Libraries hold stories, but for me, one library also began a story. My novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, was inspired by the burning of the Jaffna Public Library. It uses this act of cultural erasure to explore racism in my ancestral homeland, Sri Lanka, and my chosen homeland, Australia,” Shankari Chandran writes.