Two kinds of Paradises

A view of Sawan's library

Libraries are archives of longings. Both the writers whose books are stored on the racks and the readers whose souls delve into those racks are dreamers of sorts. Books belong to people with infinite longings.

The death of a library is very painful to those who love books. One of my beloved libraries was killed in 2015. Who would want to kill a library that was pulsating with life and that too young life? Such questions have become redundant in India, especially after 2014.   

One religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] killed the library I’m speaking about here. It was Sawan Public School’s library in Delhi. The entire school was killed by a godman and his followers just because they wanted to create parking spaces for devotees. I have narrated that story in detail in two of my books: Autumn Shadows and Black Hole.

Writer Borges was of the opinion that Paradise would be a kind of library. What else can Paradise be for those whose hearts are restless until they rest in wisdom? The irony about the death of Sawan Library was that those who promised Paradise to devotees killed it.

There are two kinds of Paradises. One belongs to genuine questers, those who read, meditate, and dream. The other belongs to those who follow some guru blindly. These blind followers are the most dangerous people on the earth. They have committed the most gruesome crimes like burning heretics, hunting witches, crusading against god’s enemies, gassing helpless people in concentration camps, lynching perceived enemies on roads…

The devotees of the RSSB godman killed a school and its library with some vengeance. They had already encroached upon acres and acres of reserved forests in the same region earlier. The Hindustan Times dated 30 Apr 2014 reported that RSSB had occupied no less than 123 acres of forest land in Asola-Bhatti region (where Sawan Public School also existed). There were reports earlier about similar landgrabs in other regions too by this same cult. This cult has an entire township of its own in Beas, Punjab where the government is utterly powerless because they have their own rules and regulations there including a meticulous traffic system. A few months back, the Times of India reported RSSB’s landgrab in the eco-sensitive Aravali forest in Haryana.

It’s no surprise then that they get an entire school demolished. Landgrabbers can never enter the real Paradise.

In May 2015, Sawan Public School’s library was razed to ground by mammoth bulldozers. Shakespeare and Shelley, Ramchandra Guha and Salman Rushdie all lay tied together by jute threads and were eventually carried away by scrap dealers.

I am told that the entire place where the school stood is now mere wasteland used as parking area for the godman’s devotees who come to listen to his sermons once or twice a year. These devotees must be entering their own versions of Paradise on such occasions.

I have retired to my village, to the land bequeathed by my forefathers where no godman will ever have entry. I can listen to the sobs that underlie Hamlet’s soliloquies in peace now. I can feel Shelley’s West Wind on my cheeks. I can contemplate on Zorba’s rustic wisdom with the music of cicadas among my crotons. My own Paradise.

Sawan Library

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