There's a sense of calm when you step inside a library that's hard to beat. Cars are honking ceaselessly on the roads. The rare monsoon sun is beating down. The tumult of human population is growing louder by the minute. But you leave all that behind as soon as you enter the cool, serene confines of a library. The silent books stacked up neatly in organised sections look therapeutic. The sombre librarian seems like a far cry from all the people outside melting in the heat. And as you choose a title and start leafing through the pages, you gently drift off into a different world where the reality of daily existence is negated.

That's the sort of experience you get at the JustBooks outlet in Andheri, the newest branch of one of India's biggest community libraries to have opened in the city. It's located at the corner of a peaceful bylane in Lokhandwala, at the far end of a line of shops. Large glass doors reveal the promise of a literary escape from the chaos outside even before you enter. Once in, a relaxed librarian, Jayanth Shetty, greets you and tells you how the books are divided. There's non-fiction on the right, books for teens in the near corner, regional titles in the far end, and fiction — divided into sub-genres like romance, mystery and thrillers — on the left. The selection spans close to 6,000 volumes, from detective stories like the ones in Agatha Christie's novels to bestsellers like Omerta by Mario Puzo to more contemporary titles like Lily Singh's How to be a Bawse. And each book is in mint condition with a transparent cover that protects it from fraying, as it
happens sometimes with second-hand books.