Drenched in History

Rain and history are common phenomena in Britain. You love them or hate them but can’t ignore either of them how hard you try. By now accustomed to both, history being my interest area I take the other with a pinch of salt. On any given day, if time permits, I would love to stroll down the history lanes and grasp as much as my little brain allows. Although my association with history was not so great in school, my parents did manage to kindle the interest through countless visits to museums, forts, and ancient architecture in various parts of the country during my summer vacation. I would credit those travel adventures for my now deep interest in ancient wisdom.

A few weeks back, on a rainy day, I ventured into yet another marvelous place, long pending on my visits list, The British Library at St Pancras. It is the highest degree on a scale of the definition of a library I ever saw. It looks more of a museum than a library, some sections are galleries, a few are reserved for exhibitions and the remaining building is dedicated to the nation’s biggest book vault. With an impressive collection of more than 25 million books, manuscripts, artifacts, etc. dating from 300 BC to the most recent 2021. You can imagine the architecture of the building to house that many books.

The building beyond magnificent took 37 years to complete, even far stretched as per British standards. It expands into multiple zones housing millions of collections, reading rooms, research rooms and public desks. They have one of the most sophisticated ways to dispatch books stored four floors underground using conveyor belts. Unfortunately, this is not accessible to the section of public due to security reasons. Being a non-member visitor, I was only allowed to view Treasures of the British Library, a gallery that comprises barely one percent of the entire collection. However, it was more than enough for me to spend hours viewing the old manuscripts, artifacts from famous people and other artifacts in art, science, religion, printing, maps around the world, not to forget the pandemic making its place in one of the corners.

I was fortunate to see William Shakespeare’s original book, Jane Austin’s letter to her brother and writing desk, music notes from Beatles and even Mahatma Gandhi’s letter to Lord Irwin 1930 from Yeravda jail. An impressive collection of old British declarations and other government documents. Magna Carta was the limelight of the gallery, having very few original copies on sheepskin still surviving from the 12th century. There were artifacts from the ancient medicine world of far east Asia. I was surprised to find a small collection of Indian artifacts in the religion section, making me proud of our culture and heritage. Given our enormous and diverse culture, it’s hard to limit it to just one small section of the gallery. There were some interesting old scripts dated 300 BC to recent centuries in the ancient scripts section.

The printing section was eye candy with various styles, techniques used in the old world to communicate. I realized how difficult it was to write and maintain the scripts in those days, things we take for granted.

The kid's section had miniature art books on their life during the corona crisis. When you see kids putting efforts to show how they were stuck at home away from friends, school and wonderful childhood days and yet how best they managed their lockdown time, it gives grief looking at ways we handle the pandemic and take things for granted.

But it also brings hope that they believe we adults will act responsibly and dispatch our duties to the best of our abilities to make their future bright again. Drenched in history, I comprehended that we are living history every moment. And how mindful we must be at that, to make it better for generations to come, to admire and not feel sorry for the acts of their ancestors.