Daily Times

A roadside ‘cupboard’ near the metropolis’ Metropole Chowrangi that had left many puzzled earlier this week has turned out to be Pakistan’s first street library.

With over 600 books on different subjects, the street library was inaugurated on the occasion  of the 144th birth anniversary of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Interestingly, however, not only would the street library offer books to those interested and attract avid readers from all around the city, it also features sculpted artwork of historic buildings of Pakistan’s southern port city.

The street library located at the Commissioner’s Corner at Metropole near Quaid-e-Azam House, was set up on the directives of Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shallwani, inaugurated by Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah.

While street crime runs rampant in Karachi, perhaps the city’s commissioner hopes to add to the quality of its citizens’ lives from a different perspective. As Jojen Reed in George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons said: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies; the man who never reads lives only one.”