A new space for silent reading in Chennai

The silent reading movement in the Mylapore-Mandaveli-RA Puram area showed up first at Nageswara Rao Park around two years ago, with modest ambitions, when Balaji launched it along with other reading enthusiasts from the region. This initiative has now moved parks, and seems to set to get entrenched in one. Due to renovation work at Nageswara Park, the reading session became irregular. With the Nageswara Rao park work gaining more surface area, it had to be shifted elsewhere. And it seems set to continue with a newly discovered green patch in RK Nagar in the Sundays to follow.

Balaji Silent Reader @park. That is a digital contact card, an eyebrow-raising one clearly. It raised this writer’s eyebrows when it popped up on his WhatsApp screen. It had been shared by K.L. Balasubramanian, a social entrepreneur driving RK Nagarra community developments, RK Nagarra being an association of residents groups in and around RK Nagar, the last outpost of Greater Chennai Corporation’s Zone 13. K.L. Balasubramanian had reasons to save this contact this way.

It is obvious the number behind the card belongs to one Balaji, and as it appears, he is someone who knows how to keep his jaws locked while his eyes are scanning the pages of a book, and displays this behaviour at a park. What is not obvious is that he, Balaji Venkataraman, a resident of D’Silva Road in Mylapore, makes sure jaws not his own are also locked and that the nose above those jaws is buried in a book. He is the face of the silent reading movement in these parts.

The silent reading movement in the Mylapore-Mandaveli-RA Puram area showed up first at Nageswara Rao Park around two years ago, with modest ambitions, when Balaji launched it along with other reading enthusiasts from the region. Before heading back into the genesis account, an update. 

This initiative has now moved parks, and seems to set to get entrenched in one. Due to renovation work at Nageswara Park, the reading session became irregular. With the Nageswara Rao park work gaining more surface area, it had to be shifted elsewhere. “On the Sunday of March 8, 2026 it went to a park at De Monte Colony on the suggestion of Vincent D’Souza, editor and publisher of Mylapore Times. And on March 15, it went to a park in RK Nagar, the one next to Ragamalika Apartments. And this Sunday (March 22), it will take place again at this park in RK Nagar,” says Balaji. 

And it seems set to continue with the newly discovered green patch in RK Nagar in the Sundays to follow. 

Balaji observes, “The response last week at the park in RK Nagar was great; around 30 people turned up.”