Ooh Books! Ooh Clothes!

Being a bibliophile naturally draws me to the libaries of Chennai and hadn't they been so distant from my residence, I'd be spending every weekend or to extrapolate a bit, everyday among those huge bookshelves. A visit to the Connemara Library, it was today and I couldn't help contrasting with the modern Anna Library every once in a while. There seemed to be a generation gap between the two, with Connemara attracting more of the elder crowd, compared to the student population spotted at Anna Library. We entered what apparently was the new building and found that it's 40 years old. Heh! And on more research, the library itself is over 100 years old! Sadly, the old building, who's architectural style's so awe-inspiring, is closed for renovation. The ground floor contained books ranging from History/Biographies, Agriculture to all kinds of fields, with such a huge collection of books, that I wanted to enrol for different courses and sit there and read through the whole course content from those books. The collection of books for each field was a lot deeper than I had seen elsewhere and it was a joy of pride to be accessible to such a knowledge repository. Apparently, there are a lot of rare books hidden inside and I spotted a lotta very old manuscripts among them.

The other floor had the periodicals section, which was quite disappointing, because the arrangement wasn't very friendly and no English magazine was visible or maybe I didn't look careful enough. The next floor had sections pertaining to different languages and the Tamil section had HUGE stacks of Novels, which many women seemed to be enjoying, gathering from the big women crowd there. I failed in finding the Philosophy books stack though even after finding the label. Again, maybe I didn't look around enough.

And then, turning back to find with joy was the English Literature section, which I found rather disappointing that Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ibsen, Ken Follett, Wadsworth (is that how he's really spelt? Atleast the Harvard classic collection seems to say so...) and other great authors had to tolerate the heat wave without AC. The lack of AC was such a killjoy in the mid-noon heat, that I had to leave with reluctant backward glances at all the books. *sigh*

Then we took a small tour of the art galleries and the museum. The museum was lovely and kids would love it for sure, especially the Enormous Dinosaur with its stunning voice-over and almost-natural eyelids! It was refreshing to watch the kids squealing and shrieking along with the T.Rex. And I wonder, what's with the empty glass box in the Exhibit of the Week at the museum! Time to leave.

The sun was still adamant to leave though it was already evening and the Cotton Street was just beginning to get filled with people landing from posh cars. It's just off the Pantheon Road at the end of the bridge at Egmore, opposite to Ethiraj Salai. Found a seller at the last shop, speaking in a refined language and offering a lotta suggestions on what clothes would suit the buyer, with a few fashion jargon. Oh nice! Bits of haggling here and there with the alert-shopper mode on to look-out for quality fabric and then off to Fountain Plaza at the opposite for a little shade. Alankar is a cosmetics store that I adore, for the huge stock they have and the good service and suggestions they provide (helped me find my first right lip-gloss). Share autos innumerable to depart. The sun gave me an awful headache. No pictures today! Good night!