When more than 1,300 people queued outside a small working space near Regal Cinema recently, many vendors in the area were surprised. "Sale lagi hai kya yahan kisi store mein?" asked one of them. Little did they know that the crowd had gathered to experience Delhi's first 'Human Library'.Before we got to enter the space, a volunteer from Delhi's Human Library addressed the crowd and told them, "We are dividing people in groups instead of one-on-one interactions. We regret the inconvenience and the entry is on first come, first served basis." This statement irked Ananya Sen, a resident of Gurgaon, who had registered three days before the event. "Why would you ask us to register and then give the entry on this basis? I thought this event would be managed well, but this is not appreciated," she told him.As we managed to reach inside after crossing all these 'readers', we got to experience the concept of 'Human Library'. The groups at the registration desk were given 'human books' to interact with, with eleven human books to choose from. The 'human books' ranged from topics like Cancer Survivor, about a cancer survivor; Break Free, about domestic violence and an abusive marriage; and The Rover, about a female solo traveller; among others. Before the 'readers' could actually meet the 'human books', they had to wait in the waiting area where the volunteers managed to keep them entertained with fun games. When a volunteer asked Roshni Chaudhary, one of the readers, her reason for coming to the library, she replied, "I knew a little about the concept. And I am really shy talking to people that I don't know. I thought I will get to meet new people and will get to listen to their stories."While the organizers had expected the turnout to not go beyond 400, it was quite overwhelming for them when the numbers went beyond 1,300 post noon. Nishkarsh Kaushik, one of the organizers from Delhi's Human Library, said later, "I think, by the end of the event, the number had crossed 1,800. If you talk about the concept, then out of 1,800, 1,000 knew about the event and the rest came for an experience. This event has happened in Indore and Hyderabad and the difference that I can actually figure out between the three cities was only in the numbers. The crowd that comes for such events is a niche crowd, who know about the concept, but in Delhi, people came because they saw that people were talking about it."