The phone booth

It was a red colored phone booth that is common in the English land. In it were stacked books that people left for people who wanted to read them. Pick and leave, was the maxim the phone booth library followed. There must have been some two hundred books of the genres I am unaware of because I only took a peek inside the glass door of the booth from the outside. Installed at the corner of a wide lane in Nottingham, England, the red phone booth library was both a show piece decorating the public road as well as a free library that served everybody in that small town.

Outside the red booth was written that the donor had installed the library in memory of a loved one. I thought that was an exciting idea. Here in India, I have known people to donate fan, bed, similar household items in memory of a dear one they lost; the idea of designing a free library felt so new and thrilling to me. When I returned to India, I wanted to emulate the concept in my colony. I also commenced the process, but the effort went futile. Finding a spot was the first challenge and one that I failed to overcome.

Back to Nottingham - The next time I visited the red library, I went there along with my host in Nottingham. She wanted to drop some books from her personal library. Some of the titles that I recall were ‘The Day John Died’, ‘Skin’; Indian comic books such as Chacha Chaudhary, Pinki, etc. My host had carried along these books with her from India during her visits to the homeland. The next time around as well I f ailed to browse through the books that were present inside the booth.

We placed the books on the shelf of the booth and returned.