Silence please..!!!!

By Huda Ayaz

As I rambled into the library, I heard the librarian yelling at someone, giving him a look like ‘if I hear u speak again I will kick you out!’ Yes yelling!! And forgetting the fact that he was making a noise double than the targeted student, the poor innocent one, who was just caught mumbling.

Whenever I hear the word “library”, the first two things that occur to me are silence and discipline. Unfortunately, I am incompetent to find them in the libraries of my university.

This isn’t just a scenario of my department only. It is what one can scrutinize in almost every library of Karachi University.

It’s not like I am debasing the authorities. What more a librarian can do when nobody gives an ear to what he says.

Not all of the pupils sitting in the library room are studious. Most of them make their ways to the library for resting, telling each other and memorializing what had happened in latest episode of some Indian soups, recommending what color one should wear in her sister’s wedding, or let’s say consuming one’s mobile package. Tormenting the whole ‘studious’ atmosphere. And if you erroneously beseech them to lower their voices, they will in return advice you to change your seat. That’s what I figured.

Apparently in summers, one could possibly think that this is the season of final studies, because everybody seems to rush towards the library. But actually, the air conditioners make students to visit this studious place, so that they could lessen the scorching hotness of summer.

The main Mehmood Hassan library is confronting the same dilemma. Except from the fact that this library is also a so-called meeting centre for ‘love birds’. An ideal place to hide oneself from a wing of people who are, let’s say, umm... against love!!

Not all the visitors of libraries are fun-seeker or rest-seeker; many of them do come to study and issue books on their ‘own’ library cards. Apart from all the attentive, bookish students, others should consider a difference between libraries and cafeterias, and should use the arcades, canteens and gardens for scoffing, fun, and excruciation so that libraries could only belong to the pedantic and studious ones.