From behind glass, the Argentine poet and writer Jorge Luis Borges speaks to those who walk past: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Inside is a slice of paradise – a round table; on it, books on various subjects.
“It’s intentional, that’s the quote I want people to see before they enter; it’s our hero quote,” says Anuradha Sehgal, the Chief Brand and Sustainability Officer of Coforge.
This is the Coforge Public Library on the first floor of Vasant Square Mall in Vasant Kunj, South Delhi. The library, open to everyone, every day, for free, is the social responsibility initiative of Coforge, the Noida-headquartered multinational information technology company.
The Vasant Kunj library, which was inaugurated on June 5, is the fourth and newest Coforge Public Library – the older libraries are in Noida’s Sector 59, Gurgaon’s Sector 48, and in Hyderabad. It sprawls over 10,000 sq ft – and is home to 15,000 titles, including 1,500 titles in Hindi, and a Braille section sourced from the National Book Trust (NBT).
Anuradha Sehgal, Chief Brand and Sustainability Officer of Coforge, at the library. Photo credit: Vivek Prakash Krishna
The library is open from 9 am to 8 pm daily, and can seat 170 users at a time in pink, blue, and grey cushioned chairs. “We typically get 200-250 people on weekends and about 170 on weekdays,” Sehgal said. Many of the visitors are senior citizens, and the library aisles are wide enough for a wheelchair to pass.
During a weekend visit to the library, The Indian Express met 70-year-old Arvind Singhal, who said he was there for the fourth time. His name, phone number, age group, and email were already in the library database, and he had logged in using his phone and a QR code.
Singhal said he had picked Aath Dinn (Eight Days) by the prolific crime fiction writer Surendra Mohan Pathak to read. “I wish this library had more Hindi books; there are limited options,” Singhal said. “I understand that it caters to younger readers of writing in English, but I wish it had more Hindi novels for people like me.”
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Harsh Parashar (41), a lawyer who practises in the Supreme Court, said he had come to check out the library from Hauz Khas. The range of choices had overwhelmed him, Parashar said – “I went into a decision paralysis, so now I’m noting down names of books I want to come back and read!”
Nitika Khandelwal (23), a student at IIMC Delhi, was on her first visit, and had found a seat from which she could see trees outside the window. “The space is really cosy,” she said.
Head librarian Misbah said the library was the product of Coforge CEO Sudhir Singh’s vision to “bring the community back to reading”. Sehgal said Singh had seen the role that privately-funded public libraries played in shaping communities in the United States, and got the “audacious idea” to build a similar network in India.
Visitors are required to deposit personal laptops, tablets, and their own books in lockers before they use the library. Each table has a sign that asks visitors to maintain silence and not use mobile phones. “We have created gadget-free libraries where we want visitors to be away from any kind of distraction,” Misbah said.
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Sehgal said having WiFi and allowing personal gadgets would likely lead the library to be “overrun by students studying for competitive exams”. Her goal was to “force people to read”, she said. “You’d love to spend an hour here, but when you’re here, read a book, because nobody else is forcing you to do that, and what is your incentive then?”
The choice of Vasant Kunj for the library was deliberate and thought-out, Sehgal said. “It has Masoodpur, Kishangarh, Mahipalpur, Chhatarpur, Gwal Pahari, Nangal Dewat, and several JJ clusters around it. Whenever we select a location, we always make sure that it is serving a very large cluster of urban and peri-urban areas, with very high population density,” she said.
In one corner of the library is a separate, soundproofed Kids Zone. “We made it so children could read aloud, sing, play, and delve into the world of books,” Sehgal said. The library has a large collection of children’s books – packing the bottom shelf in each aisle for kids to browse while their parents look for their own reading material.
Every Coforge library reaches out to government schools in a 5-10-km radius, and arranges for buses to bring in their students. “We want them to come here and read, realise that there are no limitations,” Sehgal said.
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Coforge plans to launch 26 libraries across Delhi-NCR over the next four years. The next one is coming up in Greater Noida, where the administration has provided space rent-free. Coforge is also developing an AI-powered app that will recommend books — “There is a way to read, and we will use AI to bring that to life for you,” Sehgal said.
