As the city grew over time and apartment buildings began to pop up in Roopena Agrahara, a small fringe neighbourhood of labourer communities near Bommanahalli in Bengaluru, it left an absence of adequate safe spaces for children from the area.

Haadibadi, a community library project, was established to provide an alternative space for the children of Roopena Agrahara. It also functions as a shelter from the violent realities around them. The towering skyscrapers overshadowing the deprived neighbourhoods became a symbol of the ever-widening the gaps in the society. `

Born and brought up in the neighbourhood, the founder and director of Haadibadi, who is also a teacher at St Joseph’s College, Ravikiran Rajendran remembers with fondness the tamarind trees and the now-absent open spaces, as much as he witnessed the shrinking spaces and mounting violence in the streets. He remembers seeing people being chased after with machetes and sickles as a child. He adds that even after two decades, the neighbourhood bears the same mark. On the same roads that the children play, they also have to see gruesome street fights.


To read the full article, please go to:

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/books-cinema-and-culture-bengaluru-community-library-changing-kids-lives-141383