Bicycles, Books, and the 1990s: My Days at the Golaghat District Library

An illustration of the old Assam-type Golaghat District Library building with a corrugated tin roof and GOLAGHAT DISTRICT LIBRARY signs near the entrance gates. Two young boys carrying books are walking together through the open wire-mesh gates, capturing a daily afternoon routine from the 1990s. — The old Golaghat District Library which was located near Kushal Konwar Balya Bhawan School at Mission Club Road during the 1990s.

There is a distinct aroma to the 1990s that the internet generation will never quite understand. It was a blend of rain–soaked earth, the grease of a bicycle chain, and the musty, comforting scent of old pages in a library.

Whenever I think about those days, I am instantly transported back to 1990s. I was in Class 10, standing on the precipice of growing up, and the Golaghat District Library was my sanctuary.

After passing my matriculation, I joined Golaghat Commerce College. That transition came with a newfound sense of freedom, but our daily anchor remained unchanged. Almost every single day, my friend Sanjive Singh and I would pedal our bicycles through the town and head straight for the library gates at Mission Club Road.

In those days, our world wasn't governed by search engines, Facebook, Twitter, notifications, or instant messaging. If we wanted to know something, we had to seek it out. If we wanted to get lost, we did it between the covers of a book.

Sanjive and I would spend hours tucked away in the reading rooms, scanning the daily newspapers, flipping through magazines, and meticulously choosing which books to borrow next.

An illustration of the interior of the old Golaghat District Library featuring a traditional Assam-type room lined with tall wooden bookshelves filled with books. Three teenagers are seated around a wooden table in the center, engrossed in reading books and newspapers spread out before them, surrounded by stacks of reading material. — The Golaghat District Library in the 1990s. Before the era of smartphones and search engines, our world was bound by the rustle of newspaper pages, stacked bookshelves, and afternoons spent getting lost in literature with lifelong friends.

Our reading appetites were vast, mostly split between Assamese, Bengali, and English literature. We were absolutely captivated by the modern, urban storytelling of Sourav Kumar Chaliha (Surendra Nath Medhi), our undisputed favorite. But our literary journeys didn't stop there. We devoured the profound, introspective works of Homen Borgohain, Nabakanta Baruah, Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya, Mamoni Raisom Goswami, Nirupama Borgohain, Silabhadra (Rebati Mohan Dutta Choudhury), Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Hiren Bhattacharyya, Nirmal Prabha Bordoloi, while finding ourselves deeply moved by the masterful storytelling of Syed Abdul Malik.

We consumed every Bengali book available at the library as well. While the list of writers is long, our favorites were Sunil Gangopadhyay, Samaresh Majumdar, Ashapurna Devi, Mahasweta Devi, and Bimal Mitra, alongside the wonderful travelogues of Syed Mujtaba Ali. I can still remember finishing Sunil Gangopadhyay's Sei Somoy in a single stretch of reading overnight. Oh, those were the days!

Our English reading list was equally eclectic. The library housed monumental sets like The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, and The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—though I admit that those heavy theological and political tomes were left untouched by us at the time!

Among English writers, our favorites were Khushwant Singh, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence and Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Interestingly, while the library didn't actually stock any books by Nirad Babu, it was Khushwant Singh's writings that first introduced us to him (I finally read some of Chaudhuri's Bengali work in Desh magazine and his English works years later when the internet arrived). I also remember spotting a single copy of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children on the shelf; I tried to read it then, but its magical realism was entirely beyond my teenage comprehension.

In those days, we read several English classics via Assamese or Bengali translations: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Three Musketeers, The Time Machine, The Lost World, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Jules Verne collection, The Mother, Crime and Punishment, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, The Old Man and the Sea, and many more. The library also held a great collection of Russian literature translated into English—featuring Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, and Alexander Pushkin—though we rarely made it through all of them!

And then, there were the days of pure exploration. High up on the shelves sat a heavy, pristine, complete set of the Encyclopædia Britannica. To us, that row of black–and–gold spines was the ultimate search engine. Opening one of those massive volumes felt like unlocking a secret portal to the rest of the world.

A pencil sketch illustration of two young boys in school uniforms standing in a library, looking at a large, thick book with an ornate emblem on its cover that they have just taken off a crowded wooden bookshelf filled with a row of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes. — We were getting lost in the timeless worlds of Sourav Kumar Chaliha, Sunil Gangopadhyay, and the heavy black–and–gold spines of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Looking back, the library wasn't just a building; it was the heartbeat of our youth. Our days had a beautiful, uncomplicated rhythm: Our morning ride was to explore the quiet, narrow roads of Golaghat on our bicycles; at the afternoon we headed to the District Library to dive into our reading; and at the evening we raced on our bikes to the local cinema halls to catch the latest movie releases.

The old Assam–type building might belong to the past, and the world has undeniably rushed forward into the digital age. But for Sanjive and me, the true essence of those golden days—the rustle of the pages, the intellectual curiosity, and the lifelong bonds formed under that tin roof—will never fade.

In those days, our reading appetites were so large that apart from visiting the library, we regularly bought magazines like Desh, Prantik, Bismoi, and The Reader's Digest. In those days, bookstalls also sold magazines like Debonair and Fantasy, and we often bought them too!

Several years later, when I joined Golaghat's renowned businessman, the late Mr. Ajit Baruah's company, my work required me to visit the Jorhat Indian Oil Terminal to submit SBI cheques and bring oil tankers to Dergaon and Golaghat. During that period, I started buying National Geographic from People's Book Stall at Garh Ali, Jorhat, ending up reading it regularly for over five years.

(Note: The Golaghat District Library was relocated near the Golaghat Circuit House a few years ago.)

An illustrative watercolor sketch of a bustling 1990s street scene in Golaghat, Assam. Two teenage boys ride bicycles in the foreground past the GOLAGHAT DISTRICT LIBRARY gate. The narrow street is lined with traditional wooden shops featuring signs in Assamese and English, a vintage scooter, rickshaws, pedestrians, and a distant movie poster.

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Bicycles, Books, and the 1990s: My Days at the Golaghat District Library