Venturing into Easwari, the city's first lending library is an exercise in nostalgia. It is my first visit here in more than 25 years, after having come here regularly on a weekly basis as a child. Today, this library, which first began as a paper-dealing agency run by Palani, its owner, is at least 30-plus. It has moved thrice - all on the same road of Gopalapuram, mainly due to reasons of space.

While the building is relatively new - they moved in about eight years ago - the shelves on which the books are stacked bring a host of memories flooding back. Tall, slotted racks piled high with teetering heaps of books, books and more books. But surprisingly, it seems pretty much the same as my memories of it - small, unpretentious and comfortably cluttered. None of the antiseptic and spacious comfort of big bookstores to be found here - to get past someone in a book aisle, you've got to wriggle past or flatten yourself against the shelf to pass by in the narrow corridor!

This is not a super-specialised library but rather, it is a library for the layperson who enjoys books and wants a nook in which to browse and pick up books. You've got everything from science fiction to Agatha Christie, from Chandamama to Kahlil Gibran, from Gerald Durrell to Mark Twain. What about war novels too, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock -the list goes on endlessly. And if you've got a taste for some of the older writers, how about Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, Mark Twain, the Bronte sisters. R.L. Stevenson…

Today's adults, rues Palani, shaking his head, do not have a love for reading as was the case in earlier times. Reading tastes have changed and bestsellers and the like are now the order of the day. Earlier, he says, classical literature was much more of a draw than it is now. And the kind of people who used to patronise the library too were different. Nowadays, with the TV culture so all-consuming, we hardly get anyone interested in reading, for the love of literature. More like instant gratification through a few quick read bites.

And he should know, says his son, Satish, who has been helping him run the library for the past 15 years. "He is not a man who is very educated but knows an immense amount about books. In fact, that is how the library business first began, in an informal way, by lending books to friends and acquaintances."

Palani scurries around the library like a busy bee, occasionally stopping to chat to a customer. Now, after so many years in the business, he's greying but still ever-alert. What strikes me the most is that he's not above doing any little job that has to be done - carrying a bundle of newspapers, flitting around the shelves, stopping occasionally to point something out to me.

While scanning the shelves, I come across the Nancy Drew collection and pull out a book to flip through it fondly for old times' sake and get the shock of my life! The Nancy Drew on the cover is a sleek, sophisticated young teenager in a daring, low-cut gown - nothing like the charming and undoubtedly purer-than-the-driven-snow teenager I remembered! That triggered off the memory of a shocked ex-colleague reminiscing about another Drew cover he came across, depicting Nancy in a hot clinch with what one assumed, was her boyfriend!

Relatively more recent introductions include the computer book section, which is very popular. But the children's section too, posted prominently near the entrance, is also a hot draw. How about the ever-green William, good for a lot of chuckles or Trixie Belden or Noddy or the Hardy Boys.

Curious about whether they too have succumbed to the same sort of marketing lures as seems to have happened with poor Nancy Drew? Why not find out for yourself?

Easwari Lending Library,
250, Avvai Shanmugam Salai (Lloyds Road),
Chennai - 600 086

Membership deposit (refundable): Rs 200
The library works on all days of the week from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. except Monday, which is a half-day.