LIBRARIAN LISTENING SESSIONS 

GUFTGU JAARI RAHE

At Offset, the library exists as an active site of building. Within the performative role of the librarian and curator, diverse collections are placed together as specific curations keeping the dynamics of participation from readers and visitors in mind. Once visitors arrive, Anshika Varma engages them in free flowing conversations that can range from sharing personal intimacies to political concerns or interests and curiosities. At the end of the conversation, she would choose a book from the collection that she feels carries the essence of the person she was in conversation with. They are then invited to further engage, agree or disagree with the selection after reading through the book.
These sessions are influenced by the role librarians have often played silently, in mould- ing and giving shape to ways of thinking and exposures to different worlds for children and adults alike.

“Guftgu Jaari Rahe (let the conversations always flow), was a phrase often said by my grandfather to emphasise on the importance of communication as a conduit to understand and build communities – we can think differently, but the way to move forward is to continue to engage, speak and understand each other through conversations.”

The Guftgu Jaari Rahe program at Offset invites you to consider the language and context of the books one experiences while reading. How would you address an element in a book if you could speak with them?

What would you share or ask of them? Do you feel a book comes alive when it connects with the past, present or desires of those who read it?

Postcards are presented at each library session to write letters to any element of a book one have read. These letters can be directed to a person, a landscape, a part or whole of an image and can come from an anonymous, real or fictional person.