Shreya Agarwal knows she hasn’t the patience to sit down with a book for any length of time. But in March, she learnt about a Human Library in her city of Hyderabad. Instead of leafing through a book for information, in the Human Library you learn by conversing with someone who knows the subject that interests you.

Ms Agarwal, a communications student at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, bumped into the organisers of the Human Library on her campus, where they had come to promote the event.

“The idea of having a one-on-one conversation with a person seemed interesting,” Ms Agarwal said. “I could ask the ‘book’ questions, I could get details and information. It would be like a hands-on experience.”

The concept was born in Copenhagen in 2000, and Human Library events have since been held in cities across the world. But when Harshad Fad, a postgraduate student of media business administration in Hyderabad, first heard about it last summer, there had been no such events in India.

In November, just before India’s first Human Library event was organised at a business school in the town of Indore, Mr Fad wrote to the Human Library Organisation, requesting permission to host an event of his own in Hyderabad.

“I thought to myself that conversation has been an important tool to bridge the gaps in my life,” said Mr Fad. “Whenever problems have cropped up with any relationships, or I’ve experienced any prejudices or stereotypes, after talking to a person, some bridges were built. I could understand the person better.”

That quality of empathy was particularly relevant in India, he said.

“There are so many cultures here, so many different kinds of people. You need a framework where people can come and talk at an interpersonal level, understand their issues.”

To find readers, Mr Fad spread the word on social media and visited a number of universities. He wanted young people, who could confront their prejudices at an early age.

He recruited his “human books” by first listing the issues he wanted people to learn about. “This isn’t just storytelling. We want people to ask questions and learn,” Mr Fad said. “So once we had the issues, like racism or child abuse say, we looked for people who could represent them. We called NGOs and used our contacts.”

Much to his surprise, it was not difficult to convince people to open up to strangers. “I don’t remember anyone saying no when we asked them. I think they realised the importance of talking openly about subjects that aren’t often discussed in this manner.”

At his first library event, held in an arts forum in late March, Mr Fad had assembled 10 books. Sixty people showed up to check them out in half-hour segments over a four-hour event. The second event, at the British Council on April 22, attracted more than 100 people – so many that the 20 books sometimes had to talk to small groups rather than individuals.

Mr Fad also asked seven volunteers to serve as “librarians”.

“We wanted to make sure our books were emotionally equipped after each session,” he said. “During the sessions, some of them did grow distraught. One woman who had survived domestic violence broke down once. But she still continued to narrate her experiences.”

Struck by the openness he witnessed, Mr Fad plans to organise a library event every month.

Reena Lal, who works with My Choices Foundation, a non-profit group that helps women and girls escape violence and trafficking, was a book at Mr Fad’s April library event and talked to a dozen readers over five hours.

“There were a lot of interesting young kids in their twenties, and they wanted to know what really happens when we rehabilitate women who have been abused or trafficked – whether they ever recover completely,” Ms Lal said. “One or two people surprised me by saying they’d never heard of such instances before.”

Ms Lal said the books in the Human Library also benefited from their interactions with readers. She met people such as filmmakers and architects who wanted to work in some way with the issues she grapples with every day. “It’s nice now to know that these people will think about this.”

At a time when political debate is shrill and polarised, Ms Lal said, it was valuable for people to take the time out to listen to others and ask questions.

Ms Agarwal, in her first time as a reader, talked to people about the frustrations that lead to suicide and about life in the army – subjects which sparked her curiosity precisely because they were so rarely talked about.

“We’re all caged in our own mindsets,” she said. “We think the knowledge we have is enough, that what we know is OK for now. But it’s never OK. The more you come to know about people, the more you realise how different their experiences can be.”

ssubramanian@thenational.ae