mumbai after sundown once the fortunes and misfortunes of the working day are tucked in thousands of people in mumbai shed their quintessentially mumbaikar personas and assume regional identities they talk in tamil or watch kannada television or eat gujarati food i knew an ambitious young bengali once who when he finished chasing his dreams for the day would reach out for his roots through his fraying copy of tagores plays his theory was that reading in his mother tongue helped him to think in it toosomething which he never did in the business world all daytheres hope still for all those who want to touch regional thought through books for beneath its gleaming anglicised crust there are hundreds of vernacular libraries run by various regional associations in mumbai each library has its set of loyal members reading and re reading the books the 75yearold kannada library run by the mysore association at matunga for instance has a collection of about 7000 books while the bengali library at shivaji park boasts of 10000 titlesmost of the initiative of running these libraries is taken by the elderlywho are keen to pass on their literary legacy to future generations needless to say library activities include language classes for the young some help comes in from regional governments too the karnataka government helps to increase our collection by sending some latest releases in batches of a couple of hundred books every year says madhusudan the manager of the kannada librarythe telugu population in mumbai which runs into about 16 lakhs and divides itself into 50 per cent blue collar workers and 50 per cent white collar professionals has found a unique way of looking after its literary needs while the andhra mahasabha or the telugu sahitya samiti maintain libraries for the use of the entire communityvivek granthalaya at prabhadevi is run solely for its blue collar segment dr hanumantrao palep a gynacologist has been running this library since 1967 between attending to his patientsthis library was started by a group of mill workers along with a telugu teacher in 1952 says dr palep i only helped them to organise themselves and gave it the status of a registered society today the mill hands and construction workers who drop in here in the evenings to borrow books belong to the third generation of the ones who set up the library he admits that a lot of the demand in this library which has no subsription charges is for magazines newspapers and pulp fiction but in the last few years i have noticed an interesting trend of a sizeable section of workers who are regular readers of religious literature too he adds after all we are all looking for peace todaymost of the gujarati organisations in the city usually stick to organising dandya fests during navratri and do not run libraries alongside those who do run libraries do so as a business with a borrowing charge for each bookwith a typical charge of about ten