Squeals of delight punctuated the air of rapt attention every time the magician revealed the trick of a trade to his young audience. They sat across the hall wearing bemused looks as they waited for the tips that would soon follow, conjuring up images of wearing the magician’s hat some day. The kids were attending a class on the art of magic by magician Manu Poojappura as part of the ‘Grandhasala Pakshacharanam’ organised by the Poojappura Yuvajana Samajam Grandhasala’. It is unlikely that passers-by would give the proceedings in this little building by the wayside a second thought unless they know that the Samajam has been functioning continuously for over almost 65 years now.
The ‘Grandhasala’ has a proud history of more than six decades. It began as a civilian body that took initiative in organizing social services. Thirunainar Kurichi Madhavan Nair, the veteran lyricist who penned songs like ‘Aatma vidyalayame’ and ‘Ishwara chinthaithonne manujanu’ was one of the early patrons of the Samajam. Other luminaries such as biographer P K Parameswaran Nair, playwright Kainikkara Kumara Pillai and others have also been involved in its activities.
“Those days, we youngsters were at the helm of any activity concerned with a social cause. There was a genuine enthusiasm in the youth to get involved in community activities,” remembers T Krishnan Nair, a retired teacher and one of the foremost members to join the Samajam along R Madhavan Nair, also a school teacher. Both of them, octogenarians now, are daily visitors to the grandhasala to this day.
“The Samajam, in due course, added a grandhasala, taking a cue from the Library Movement spearheaded by P N Panicker,” says G Radhakrishnan the current Secretary. ‘‘We have a host of activities for women, children, youngsters, elders and so on,” he adds. The library, which had started as one with mere 5000 books collected from the homes of well-wishers, has now grown into a 35,000-book-strong one.
There are separate sections for children’s literature, poetry, fiction and so on. “We recently finished an up-to-date cataloguing of the books and you can pick your choice in seconds,” says Radhakrishnan. An exclusive section for women’s publications is also in the making.
The library, chosen for the best library award instituted by the State Library Council in the past, receives an yearly grant of Rs.5000. “This year, we bought the books prescribed for the All Kerala Reading Competition organized by the Library Council and put them on display as early as in March. So our student members had plenty of time to read through them. And two have won prizes at the sub-district level and one has qualified for the district-level competition,” he says.
The grandhasala has a Vanitha Vedi which runs a ‘Pusthaka Vitharana Padhathi’ (book distribution scheme) for women. “The members take books to the houses in the neighbourhood and lend them to women for a week. One borrower can lend up to six publications for a week. The scheme has been started with the aim of popularizing reading habit among home makers and has been growing in popularity. We now have 107 members in this scheme,” he says.
The Samajam also runs a nursery school in an adjacent building which was recently renovated. The building, which stands on five-and-a-half cent government property, was also given a facelift. The books are now neatly arranged in built-in cupboards with glass doors and two steel racks have also been added. “We hope to digitize the library in near future and hope to raise the funds for that quite soon,” says Radhakrishnan.
Student authors, who had won prizes at various writing competitions held throughout the State were felicitated on the occasion. Gayathari B, Agnivesh Jyothiraditya, Sikha Sadasivan, and Soja Kurien were among the children who felicitated.
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