Transcription

Narrator: Nayana Ramakrishnan (NR)

NR:  The one sort of consolation or one friend that I always had was books. In fact, I recall that first week of school, they took me to the library, the school library. They were giving me an orientation of the whole school. Somebody was, I’m not sure who. But then they took me to the library and I saw all these books, these marvelous books. They said, “Every day you can have two, but only two books a day.” That was just perfectly all right.

So every day I used to take two books, and then the first thing I did on each of the books was write my name on them because that was an Indian thing. When you get a book you write your name, so you immediately know it’s not anybody else’s. Then what happened is, I got a call shortly after. The teacher got a call and I’m sent to the principal’s office. They said, “Why have you defaced all the books? Look at your name on these six or eight books.”

I had it in four places. I had it on the side. I put my name, “Nayana.” And in the inside and the back, and just about everywhere. So in four places in about six to eight books. When they asked me, “Why did you put name on there?” I wouldn’t answer. I thought I’d done something bad, but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t answer.

Then I think somebody, one of the administrators or the principal, figured out and said, “Do you know what a library is?” I didn’t know what a library was. I didn’t know what you do there. “Do you know that you’re supposed to borrow the books? You don’t get to keep them. You borrow them and then you return them.” So I got that concept down. After that I used to take out plenty of books, but I didn’t put my name on it.