Books stacked inside Chaitanya Library; (below) tomes covered in dust and cobwebs. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta

Cobwebbed and coated in a thick layer of dust, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Shelley are struggling to survive on the shelves of Chaitanya Library. Bankim Chandra and Rabindranath Tagore fare no better, musty and fragile from neglect.

A large chunk of around 1.5 lakh books owned by Chaitanya Library has not been touched in years. The tattered moth-eaten tomes stand precariously on steel racks, the pages tied up with ropes. Books that couldn’t find a foothold on the shelves have been bundled and dumped on the floor.

The 119-year-old private library at 4/1 Beadon Street, a stone’s throw from Minerva, is struggling to make ends meet with an annual capital of Rs 40,000, including a paltry state grant.

“We receive a state allowance of Rs 12,000 to buy new books every year. The rest of the amount comes from membership fees and donations by the library’s committee members. But that too is very little to keep the library in good shape. All the money is spent on footing electricity and telephone bills, pest control measures and paying a librarian and a caretaker,” rues committee secretary Shyamapada Ray.

The library currently has 400 readers, 100 less from last year, who shell out an annual membership fee of Rs 5. “The lack of funds has also affected proper utilisation of the building. Books occupy 3,000 sq ft area, while about 2,000 sq ft lies unused. We don’t have the resources to expand or hire more manpower for better upkeep,” adds Ray.

A fumigation chamber set up a few years ago to preserve old books is now out of use. Among those crying for immediate attention are rare books by Amritalal Basu, Girish Ghosh and Swarnakumari Debi. This apart, Chaitanya Library has an impressive collection of Bengali fiction and non-fiction titles, English classics, children’s literature and a host of Indian and foreign journals.

The ramshackle two-storeyed building that currently houses Chaitanya Library came up in 1893, the year Minerva was unveiled. But while the theatre stop is glowing after a fresh lease of life, the future of the reading hub set up by “Fr. Tommery Saheb” and some young booklovers remains uncertain.