In Hyderabad, an ATM that dispenses literature

The Story Box dispenses short curated poems, fables, facts and puzzles, all at the click of a button. Try it at the Hyderabad Literary Festival at Vidyaranya High School

Push a button and read a poem in Hyderabad. A vending machine that dispenses stories, fables, facts and puzzles is all set to make its debut at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) at Vidyaranya High School from January 27 to 29.

Called the Story Box, this four-foot tall cherry orange machine made of metal is customised to print free information on HLF’s multiple activities across 13 streams as well as short, curated literary content. “Students call it an ATM of literature,” smiles Aparna Vishwanatham seated next to a Story Box at DoScience, an experiential Science centre, in Sanjeevaiah Park.

The idea germinated in December 2019 when the team considered acquiring and setting up France’s Story Machine — a story-vending machine — at DoScience.

It was not easy though as importing it would be expensive. With no blueprint to work on, the team worked through an iterative process to create Story Box. “In terms of the final output and the interface, we don’t even know what’s inside the Story Machine. We only knew that it prints at the press of a button. We started from scratch; our only aim was to print stories in English, Telugu and Hindi.”

The two years of pandemic gave them time to build a technical team (coding, hardware and design) and connect with vendors to fabricate it in Hyderabad. With five editorial members including Aparna, the first product was tested at Vidyaranya High School in February 2021. “The school was encouraging because Story Box aligned with its spirit of reading,” she recalls. Big launch planned in November ’21 had to be shelved due to the third wave of the pandemic.

Undeterred, the team began to connect with schools in May 2022. Presently, 29 units of Story Box are present at schools such as Sanghamitra, Ganges Valley, Colonel’s, Venus and Mumtaz. There is also one at Vivekananda Institute of Languages in Ramakrishna Math, the IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan’s office in the Secretariat and a pilot for the Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University.

Aparna : “Ramakrishna Math is going with our regular content as they want students of languages to inculcate the reading habit whereas the Agricultural University wants its students to read up on the latest developments in the field of agriculture. We create content from their textbooks, various agriculture-focused websites, platforms and technologies.”