Where the Sun Never Sets by Stuti Changle

Author:Stuti Changle [Changle, Stuti]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354923425
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2022-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Summer Vacation

6 May 2014

Dear Diary,

Summer vacations are the best, aren’t they?

More so when it is the summer vacation that you’ve been waiting for so long. And guess what? After months of not being able to update you on what is going on in my life, I now have the time to tell you everything about my life again.

So finally, one of the most dreadful years of my school life, the one where I was worried every day about the board exam, has gone by. And the most awaited summer vacation of my life is here.

I am free to roam around, watch TV, go cycling or trekking, meet my friends every now and then.

In India, we do not have the concept of working after school but Riti Didi was telling me that our cousins in the US have taken up summer jobs. I really liked the idea. I spoke with my family, and they were okay with letting me volunteer as a part-time librarian at the Mussoorie Library on Mall Road. My job is to arrange the books after the readers have dropped them off at the reception. If you ask Nishit, he’d say that it is a very menial job, but for me, it is an opportunity to be surrounded by books and therefore I like every bit of it.

It is said that the Mussoorie Library is as old as the city itself. It is at one end of the Mall Road, and I cycle from home to the library every day. Sometimes the roads are full of tourists from Punjab and Delhi, and it takes a little longer than usual to reach there.

Summer is the peak season for tourists. Even the otherwise serene places cease to be so as enormous crowds take over the town. Tourists are a nuisance in Mussoorie sometimes. Their incessant honking disturbs the tranquillity of the hills.

The library is private, and thankfully, tourists are not allowed to enter it. The library is a colonial landmark and its reading rooms and bookcases are full of volumes from an earlier era. I am not being paid a single penny, so they are okay with me taking some days off when I need to. It is kind of a good deal.

The smell of old yellow paper that has turned so fragile that it may decompose on its own much before it can be accidentally torn or burnt by a human makes me happy. It is a feeling of coming back home. I really can’t explain what I feel when I hold these books. I want to dive deep into every book and live like the characters for a while. I often have this desire to live many lives. I want to change my name often, be in a different city, get a new job, and make a life distinct from my previous one. I want to keep doing this until I grow old and retire and possibly die. Guess what? If it is true that my soul is that of a writer, I will never retire.

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