Every evening at Ahmedabad’s Parimal Garden, people gather for different reasons. Some arrive for long walks after work. Children run across pathways with cricket bats in hand, while elderly residents settle onto benches beneath old trees. Amid the movement and chatter sits a small wooden cabinet lined with books, drawing people towards it.

A child pauses to pull out a comic book. An elderly man carefully flips through a novel before placing it back. A college student stands there reading for nearly twenty minutes before leaving with a paperback tucked under his arm. Nobody monitors the shelves. There are no membership cards, fines, or formal procedures. The library functions entirely on trust.

The idea came from Ahmedabad-based friends Heet Doshi and Om Thakkar when they were still college students. Through their reading community, ‘Your Reading Circle’, the duo began setting up free mini libraries in public parks to make books more accessible. 

What started with one library at Parimal Garden in June 2024 has now grown into 13 libraries across Ahmedabad and Vadodara, with three more set to open soon. In March 2026, they also registered an NGO called ‘Virakt Foundation’ to expand the initiative further.

For Heet, the journey began with a small observation.

“We realised there were a lot of people who loved reading, but there were very few places where readers could actually meet each other and share that interest,” he says.

The duo started Your Reading Circle in Ahmedabad in September 2023. The group brought together people who enjoyed books but lacked spaces to discuss them outside social media or academic settings. The founders had no larger plans at the time. They just wanted to create a reading culture around them.

Then they came across a social media reel about Perumkulam in Kerala, where libraries are spread across the settlement every few hundred metres.

“That idea stayed with us for a long time,” Heet tells The Better India. “We kept thinking that if a village in India could create something like that, why couldn’t we try doing it in Ahmedabad?”

A small bookshelf, and weeks of figuring out permissions 

In April 2024, the two friends began discussing how they could set up a small public library inside a city park. They made a basic list of what they would need: permissions, funding, fabrication and books. 

What they did not anticipate was how difficult the permission process would become.

“The biggest challenge was understanding where to even go because nobody had dealt with something like this before, so we found ourselves visiting multiple departments just to figure out who could actually give us permission,” he says.

The team spent weeks moving from one office to another. Some officials redirected them elsewhere, while others were unsure which department held the authority to approve a library inside a public garden.

“It sounds like a very small thing when you say you want to place a library in a park,” he adds. “But practically, it takes a lot of patience.”

Eventually, after several follow-ups and discussions, the team received permission to install their first mini library at Parimal Garden, one of Ahmedabad’s busiest public spaces. On 23 June 2024, the first library officially opened to the public.

Initially, the founders........

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