There is pin-drop silence as Alemla Longchar slowly recites the poem ‘Mother’s Lap’, letting the 40 people in the chapel absorb every word, every emotion. This could have been a classroom anywhere, but in Dimapur this is the district jail and the audience comprises inmates ranging from those in their early 20s to prisoners in their late 50s.
It is indeed a real-life twist to the plot of 2008 Oscar-winning movie ‘The Reader’, where Hanna Schmitz – played by Kate Winslet – learns to read and write in prison with the help of a jail library and tapes from her ‘reader’ friend, an advocate. In this jail in Nagaland, Longchar – with the help of three lawyers and an NGO that sends books from metros like Delhi and Bengaluru – reads out to inmates twice a week and has motivated several prisoners to become literate and others to grow fond of books.
The prison housing about 80 inmates has a small library with about 200 books and magazines.
The jail library in Dimapur – the commercial capital of Nagaland – didn’t find many takers initially. But with Longchar’s twice-a-week reading sessions, more and more inmates are making use of the small library and demanding books of their interest.
“The reading sessions have encouraged many unlettered inmates to learn to read and write with help from educated prisoners,” says Limasenla Longkumer, a lawyer and one of the founding members of the KAL Group. “The educated inmates have taken the lead and are teaching their fellow inmates. What’s most encouraging is the request for alphabet books from illiterate inmates,” she says.
Read more of this in a report by Yudhajit Shankar Das published in The Times of India... (Link given below)
