Library and Learning Room Membership, Annual, Gaya

Details

A year of access to the Gaya academy reading room and lending library. Sixty desks, unhurried light, fans and a generator, and one rule that is actually enforced: no phone calls in the hall. For most students here the obstacle is not a teacher, it is a quiet place to sit. What a membership buys has to be said exactly, because a reading room is where vagueness costs a student their morning. An open seat is access to the hall, not a particular desk: seats are first come, and on a February evening before the boards the hall does fill. If you need the same desk every day, that is the reserved variant at Rs 300 a month on top, which is what the counter charges for it. The struck through Rs 4,320 is not a decoration either, it is twelve months at the Rs 360 counter rate, against Rs 3,600 for the year, so two months are genuinely free.

• Reading room open 7 am to 9 pm, seven days, 60 desks
• Rs 360 a month at the counter, or Rs 3,600 for the year, which is ten months for twelve
• Lending library, 3 books at a time on a 14 day loan, from about 3,000 titles
• Locker, drinking water, power backup and wifi at the study tables
• No phone calls in the hall, and the rule is enforced rather than printed
• An open seat is first come and is not a reserved desk. A permanent desk is Rs 300 a month more
• No auto charge and no card kept on file. Renewal is manual
• Printing is Rs 2 a page at the counter, and a lost book is replaced at cost, because a small library only survives if books come back