My friend in Panjim promised to
take me around the city. He knew where the good places where. We start the
morning at the Basilica of Bom Jesus, which is a structure that houses the
relics of saint francis xavier. I remember reading up on the life of St Xavier.
How he gave up a rich upbringing, to spread the word God. He had a deep
adoration for life around him. I felt like he came from a place of love. Inside
the church, it was interesting that nobody asked me my faith. I was allowed to
come in and pray nonetheless. There were so many beautiful aspects about faith
and religion. I always wanted to ask the leaders of each major religion of the
world a question. These religions included Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and
more. I assumed they were really wise and enlightened because of their deep
study of the scriptures of their religious books. Why did they not find a way
to learn from the good values and practices of the other religions? If they all
wanted to promote the idea of respect, love, brotherhood, why did they not work
together? Why did the wise religious leaders not cooperate with each other?
Later we visited the St. Cathedral Church and also visited a museum nearby that house a large collection of paintings.
Many of these paintings were of the various leaders from Portugal that ruled
over Goa. There were artifacts like coins, weapons, maps and other goods also
present at this museum. Below the painting of each leader, there were the
following details
Born ____
Died ____
Remembered For ______
Some of them were remembered for
conquests, some of them were remembered for inventions, some of them were
remembered for administration of the colonies. Most of them lived for sixty to
seventy years. It made me think about death? When would I die? What would I be
remembered for? I recalled the words of the artist, Aisha Chowdary who was
suffering from pulmonary fibrosis when she made this comment at a conference,
'In 100 years time, everyone in this room is going to die. Not one person will
be alive. We may die at different times. But we all will die someday.' Hmm. I
was twenty years old that day. I may survive for another sixty years if I am
lucky. That is about 525949 hours, 21914 days, 3130 weeks, 720 months. I have
just 720 months left. Just 720 summers left in my life. Wow, that was not too
much time. I had to change the world, get married, start a family, travel the
world, read every book, make beautiful art, start a company and more. Oh man! I
don't have enough time now. If I try doing everything, I will end up doing
nothing. If I really want to be remembered for something after my death, I
needed to focus on one thing. Just one teeny tiny thing I am crazily passionate
about. Hmm, What is that one thing for me? Ah! That is what I am on this journey
for. Very cool. But why do I want to be remembered when I am dead and gone? I
mean how will it matter to me, if somebody remembers me, if I will never know
that they remember me.
In the afternoon, we catch a bus to
the panaji library. I thought it would be another broken down building, with
books from the last century. Mumbai, the city I came from, was the financial
and entertainment capital of the world. This city of dreams, did not have many
well resourced public libraries. There were a few in South Mumbai, but not
everyone can travel two hours everyday to spend time there. If one of India's
most prosperous cities did not have a good library network, what about the tier
II and tier III cities. If people don't have access to knowledge, how would
they explore human ideas, how they put forward well researched arguments. A friend, I recently met in Mumbai, told me
about a library in his village in Bihar. He grew up there. There was a retired
civil servant that stayed there. He decided to hire a small room in a structure
in the village and converted it into a public library. He bought new books and
made many of his own books available. Because of his contribution, my friend,
was able to spend his childhood, reading Gandhi, Tolstoy and Thoreau. It is
mostly people like this that have to take a personal initiative to make such
resources available to people in their locality.
Here in Panaji, there is
another such initiative, The Goa State Central Library. We decided to spend the
afternoon here. The first floor was the children's section and had over 10,000
books. The second floor was the circulation section and had 70,000 books, both
fiction and non-fiction. The fourth, fifth and sixth floors were for Rare
manuscripts, a reference section and a portugese books collection respectively.
It was open to the public and anybody could spend the day here reading and
learning from the wisdom of the ages. Goa also has a very effective village and
district level library system. There are well stocked libraries available in most
major cities in Goa. I wish more states in India, learned from the example of
Goa. The National Public Library in Kolkata is another example, of a well
resourced learning center, with a collection of over 2.2 million books. In the
colleges that I visited over the past year, I mostly found a collection of
technical and subject specific books. There was much work to be done with
regard to developing a more diverse collection of both fiction and non-fiction
books. I think it is extremely important for both the government and private
sector to find ways to make knowledge accessible to the masses. With the advent
of the internet, there are questions about, the need of a physical library. But
not every individual in the country has access to an internet connection in
India.
In the United States of America,
the most well resourced, library is the National library of Congress with over
34 million books in its collection as on 2015. The best academic library is the
Harvard University Library with 16 million books in its collection. The Boston
Public Library has nineteen million book and the New York Public Library had 16
million books in its collection. The New York Public Library functions as a
private non-profit with majority of funding from the city government. Beyond the public and academic setups, the
private non-profit library can be another model, administrators can explore to
make knowledge accessible to more people. The Harvard University Library, has 8
times the number of books available at the National Library of India in
Kolkata. Harvard University has a large endowment fund, but the Ministry of
Culture and Tourism in India can find ways to allocate a larger budget to the
creation and sustainence of more libraries at the urban, rural, city, village and
district level.
In the evening, we visit another
learning center after Dinner. It is an astronomy and star gazing club that my
friend was a part of. They had their own telescopes and would conduct periodic
star gazing trips around the city. They organized public lectures, film
screenings and events related to astronomy, physics and the universe. We have a
goan dinner of prawns and beer, and then spend the night at one of my friends
relatives homes. It was a good day. Goa seemed like a place, I could easily
fall in love with.
We visit my friend's ancestral home
in the morning. Family photos adorn the wall. At one point of time, over a 100
people stayed here. The puja room was still lit and a priest came every morning
to do the daily rituals. The furniture is exquisitely designed. Portraits of
family members who looked like members of a royal family were also on the
wall.. There is a palanquin in the attic. The storeroom is filled with broken
and semi broken toys. An open cupboard with over a thousand keys is spotted in
the distance. The house was like a maze, one room leading to another and then
we walk into a large lawn. As we walk out of the house, we meet a lady that
stares us down and forces us to take notice of her. He notices her, because she
is an old member of the house. They have a conversation about the good old
times. I observe and wait. I hear a crackle under my feet. I have stepped on a
dead leaf. Back at home, we were treated a delicious lunch of goan fish curry
and rice. We catch a ferry back to his home in the evening. We spend the night
discussing stories and people we have grown up with. This is my last night in
Goa. After a heavy morning breakfast, my friend volunteers to drop me to the
panaji station. I catch a bus back to madgaon and then jump on my next train.
Karnataka, here I come.
Sat-chit-ananda
@AbhishekShetty_