Chennai’s Easwari Lending Library preserves its storied legacy while evolving with technology
One of Chennai’s oldest lending library chain gets Insta-savvy and gains new members who pick up books after watching their film adaptations. Is the city reading more?

On the penultimate day of National Library Week (November 14-2, a visit to Easwari Lending Library in Gopalapuram, feels like a portkey to a wistful past. Archie’s double digests, Tintin and Asterix comics, and Perry Masons line the shelves of this library which began back in 1955. Amidst the silence, there is the occasional bargaining. “Ma, can I please take this copy of Captain Underpants? I haven’t read it yet,” asks Ibrahim. The request however, is denied. “You’ve already picked up your books for the week,” says his mother K Tasneem.

S Mukundan interrupts my tennis-match observation of pleas and instead asks me to pull up Easwari’s page on Instagram. The latest on their aesthetically curated feed is a strong recommendation for English historian William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. “Many people have already reserved the book and most are young teenagers. People have come to the library after checking out our social media recommendations,” says this third generation entrepreneur.