A walk with a cause to get people to read

Sexagenarian walks 12 km daily to deliver reading materials

Every morning from Monday to Saturday, P. Sukumaran fills two bags full of books and walks 12 km with a simple objective: to deliver reading materials at the doorstep to people in parts of Karuvatta and Kumarapuram grama panchayats in Alappuzha. Mr. Sukumaran joined the Kumarapuram Public Library at Karuvatta South near Haripad, which comes under the Kerala State Library Council, as a librarian in 1979 and soon turned into a ‘walking librarian’ to inculcate in people the value of reading books. His act of distributing books on foot has helped create a whole bunch of readers in the last 41 years. “I love walking. I used to walk several kilometers as a newsboy during my teenage days. When I took up the job as a librarian, not many were visiting the library or borrowing books. It was when I decided to reach out to readers with reading materials. What makes me happy is that a lot of people including women and children have become avid readers after reading books and others materials given by me,” says Mr. Sukumaran, 61, a resident of Karuvatta.