The quieter parts of Colombo, with its tree-lined avenues, collection of cafés, galleries and creative hotspots, saw a quiet new space open up for book lovers, writers, and creatives this month – the Lakmahal Community Library.
Nestled within Lakmahal, a grand colonial home in the heart of Colombo, the library’s physical space is a blend of colonial grandeur and cool modernity. Using a quarter of the old house’s ground floor, it repurposes some of the house’s more formal rooms to create an intimate library and reading area as well as a well-ventilated, well-lit, Covid-friendly meeting space – ideal for those who wish to avoid air-conditioned rooms.
With its doors open to the public last week with 2022’s edition of the interdisciplinary arts festival Colomboscope, Brunch caught up with Lakmahal Library Founder Anisha Dias Bandaranaike to learn more about the story of Sri Lanka’s newest creative hotspot.
“One of the things that inspired me to start the library is the fact that it is one-quarter of my family’s old home, a place where everyone has always loved literature and reading. I wanted to honour the history of the house and combine it with my love of reading and creative writing and be able to share that space with everyone. The library’s whole idea is to encourage people to engage with the literary arts and read creative work,” Anisha explained.
The beginnings of the Lakmahal Library
The idea for the Lakmahal Library had been germinating with Anisha for over three years, with her first attempting to get it properly up and running at the end of 2019. Then, of course, the pandemic struck, which threw a wrench in her plans. Nevertheless, last week finally saw the opening of the Lakmahal Library to the public.
While Anisha is the founder of the Lakmahal Library, she is by no means a lone wolf. The library has a Board of Directors, all of whom serve voluntarily. The Board comprises Dhananath Fernando (Chief Operations Officer of the Advocata Institute), Priyanthi Fernando (Executive Director of International Women’s Rights Action Watch, Asia Pacific), author Ameena Hussein, and Chalani Ranwala (Communications Manager at Verité Research).
Anisha explained that while she knew some of the Board members before setting up the Lakmahal Library, some members of the Board were those she had met for the first time, and being able to work with like-minded people really helped the process along. In fact, Anisha shared that the whole library had been a highly collaborative effort – from the efforts of the Board and Anisha’s mother who played a huge part in setting up the interior of the library, to friends and family who had donated books to the library’s collection.
The library’s offering
As the Lakmahal Library is quite a small space, its collection is still on the small side, comprising 1,500 books. “We’ve had to choose how to limit it right now,” Anisha said. “One of the ways in which we’ve limited the collection is by including only English works for the moment because it’s what I’m most familiar with, but in future we hope to expand the collection to be trilingual.”
Another way the Lakmahal Library focuses its collection is through age group, with the library housing a collection of work more suited to adults. “Young children are already encouraged to read and write in a creative manner, but adults are not really encouraged to read once they’ve grown,” Anisha shared, adding that since the mandate of the library was to foster and encourage reading, for the moment, they wanted to focus on encouraging adults to read and engage with literary work.
The Lakmahal Library’s collection was sourced through donations after the library sent out an open call asking for books. It’s very important to Anisha that the library gives readers and members what they want to see, and so, even when doing her first call-out for book donations, Anisha first did a survey to see what kind of genres people were most interested in reading.
“Interestingly, when I put out the call for donations, I didn’t expect much, but I got 1,500 books – 200 to 300 were from my own family, but a lot of it came from donations. Now that we are at a point where we want to take the collection in a particular direction, there is a list of books we want to get and we are only accepting those donations.”
There were also plans to purchase books from a distributor to supplement the library’s collection based on member feedback, but due to the current situation with foreign exchange and imports, this has been paused for the moment.
The library as a community and event space
Last week (on 20 January), the library opened its doors to the public in tandem with Colomboscope, the contemporary arts festival and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue that has grown steadily within the cultural landscape of Colombo since 2013.
Colomboscope’s theme for 2022, ‘Language is Migrant,’ has a strong literary connection, with the theme itself stemming from a poem-manifesto by Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña titled ‘Language is Migrant’. In this manifesto, Vicuna wrote: “Words move from language to language, from culture to culture, from mouth to mouth. Our bodies are migrants; cells and bacteria are migrants too. Even galaxies migrate,” and this sets the theme of this year’s festival – looking at language, its role in art and how we understand art.
The Lakmahal Library was one of Colomboscope’s venue partners, playing host to its reading room, a literature-based showcase called ‘Reading in Tongues,’ an installation of artists’ literary work drawn from ideas of feminist and collective literature, and featuring a major presentation of Cecilia Vicuña’s poem-manifesto ‘Language is Migrant,’ which was what served as the inspiration for the entire edition of this year’s festival.
Speaking on the Lakmahal Library being able to open its doors in tandem with such a powerful creative partnership, Anisha noted that Colomboscope, and in particular ‘Language is Migrant,’ shared many similarities with what the library was trying to do, which was what led to the collaboration between the two.
“It’s been amazing to see the space open and become a reality,” Anisha said. “The work we’re doing is definitely not done yet, and there is so much more to be done and so much to figure out, but we’re thrilled to see it finally open and we’re eagerly anticipating the work of the future.”
As a community library, Anisha also explained that while the library element was at the core of the Lakmahal Library, they were also looking to engage with the community creatively, and hoped, once things improve with Covid-19, they could have a packed event roster, with collaborative events like that of Colomboscope. “We really want to get events and collaborations going and get people engaged,” Anisha said.
Becoming part of the Lakmahal community
Reflecting on the experience of bringing the Lakmahal Library to life, Anisha shared that the most inspirational and empowering aspect of the journey had been the sense of community it had created. “Working with different groups of people, from the Board of Directors to everyone else who came together to make this possible, from family to friends to strangers, I got a lot of support from different people,” Anisha said, adding: “It was a truly collaborative effort.”
The Lakmahal Community Library is open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Library membership is Rs. 500 per month and Rs. 5,000 per year, with a discounted rate for students.
