Over a recent phone call, 28-year-old copywriter Amanda D’Souza paints us the picture of a quiet group-reading session at Borivali’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP). “Reading in the rain makes the experience more, if I may use this word, romantic,” she shares. The sense of romance is precisely why she decided to launch the Borivali chapter of these sessions titled SGNP Reads during the monsoons. 

It follows the chapters of Bandra Reads and South Bombay Reads that also began three weeks back. These silent reading groups are different from book clubs where people gather to read a single title and discuss it later. To start, the material is not limited. Readers can bring along comic books, research papers, or even shampoo bottles if it catches their fancy. Then, all they need to do is find a seat amongst the group and read in silence.