A cool, new Sunday culture is ditching screens for books!

Something unusual is happening on Sundays across Gujarat. In Anand, the milk capital, cafes that rarely see a crowd before noon are opening their shutters at 10am. Not for chatty customers but for rooms full of people reading quietly. In Ahmedabad, the reading sessions take place in cafes and in the open air. In Surat, a school has opened its campus and its library every single Sunday for over two years, drawing students, parents, and professionals into a reading ritual.

None of these initiatives was born from govt policy or institutional mandate. They emerged from individuals who sensed the same void: in an age of relentless screen time and shortened attention spans, people had not stopped wanting to read; they had simply stopped finding reasons to start. The routine had disappeared, and no one around them was reading either. These reading communities are driven by the same instinct. The best way to fight the screen is not to lecture people about it, but to fill a room with silence and let books do the rest.
In Anand, that room is a cafe, and a different one every week. By 10am, the brunch chatter you would expect is replaced by something unusual: intentional silence.

What began as a Sunday experiment by the Anand Silent Book Club has grown into one of the town’s most unusual community gatherings. The club draws anywhere between 30 and 95 readers every week. Behind the scenes, a WhatsApp group has swelled to over 1,000 members. The format is basic. Participants gather at a different cafe every Sunday from 10am to noon. The first half hour is for settling in, ordering coffee, finding a chair, and meeting someone new. At 10.30am sharp, the talking stops. For one full hour, the only sound is the turning of pages.
At 11.30am, the room exhales. “This is what I’m reading,” someone says. Another recommends a novel. A third begins discussing investments. Conversations meander freely, from literature to life, careers to travel, board exams to stock markets. By noon, strangers have become familiar faces.
“We set out to make reading social again,” says Kush Patel, 35, founder of the book club. “People hadn’t lost their love for reading. They had lost focus. What they needed was one structured, distraction-free hour to rediscover the joy of a book.” Patel has spent close to a decade in digital marketing, working with clients across the country. But the reading club is a labour of love, not commerce.

Seeded in Atlanta
The idea was seeded thousands of kilometres away. “I was exploring things to do ahead of a trip to Atlanta last year when I came across a silent book club chapter there,” Patel recalls. “I was so taken by the idea that I started one in Anand even before I boarded the flight. If it works in Atlanta, why not here?” The club rotates venues every week to cover different parts of Anand. For cafe owners, it means steady, reliable footfall. For readers, it means exposure to new spaces. The crowd is diverse too, and that is the beauty of it. School students sit next to doctors who read all day for work but had forgotten what it felt like to read for pleasure. Architects who moved back to Anand share tables with retirees. Some come for community, others for calm.
“Reading together in silence creates a strange but profound sense of belonging,” Patel reflects. “You don’t need to speak to feel connected. The shared act of being present with a book is enough.”
Recently, the group hosted an “audiobook walk” — participants arrived in walking shoes, wore headphones, and listened to audiobooks together as they strolled through the city.
A newsletter sharing reading recommendations and club updates was also rolled out this week, designed to help newcomers and readers looking for their next book. Recognition has already arrived. In Feb, the initiative received a letter of appreciation from chief minister Bhupendra Patel, who lauded the effort for reviving reading culture among youth in the digital age.
Ahmedabad’s Sunday ritual
Ahmedabad boasts several reading circles, each with its own character. Ahmedabad Reads | Ahmedabad Creates, founded in May 2024 by Shreya Bagthariya, a marketing and branding communicator, was inspired by Bengaluru’s Cubbon Reads, a public reading movement that reimagined parks as sanctuaries for stillness. On Sunday mornings, readers show up with mats, paperbacks, and flasks of chai, and find a patch of grass.

“We needed this pause in the day,” Bagthariya says. “Step outside, move away from screen-filled spaces, and normalise reading in public. What began as an experiment has evolved into one of the city’s most intimate Sunday rituals.” The first 90 minutes of the 120-minute session are for reading, writing, painting or sitting in contemplative quiet. The final half hour loosens into conversation. On any given Sunday, 20 to 30 people turn up. Nearly 300 have drifted in so far. There is no membership. The crowd is eclectic: children, retired doctors, young professionals and senior citizens. Many are newcomers to the city, seeking connection without the weight of networking.

Anuradha Mallik, a tech startup founder who has lived in Ranchi and Bengaluru, is one of them. “My work keeps me on screen all day,” she says. “These Sunday mornings are sacred. No screen, no calls, no nothing. People simply co-exist without expectation. It has given my love for reading a renewed direction, and a sense of belonging in a city that was once entirely new to me. I also get to have meaningful conversations about books and ideas.”

Another reading club, with arguably the richest lineage of any reading circle in the state, runs out of Navajivan Press, a publishing house founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1929. Every Sunday from 8am to 11am, readers aged 10 to 80-plus gather outside and inside Karma Cafe on the Navajivan campus.
There is no membership fee. Chai flows from a shared flask. Books by Navajivan and other publishers are laid out for anyone to pick up. Readers bring their own, too. The silence arrives without instruction, says Vivek Desai, managing trustee of Navajivan Trust.
The Navajivan Reading Club started eight months ago, almost by accident. “People used to visit our organic food market on Sundays. There was a demand for book reading. We started the activity as an experiment. The very first Sunday, over 50 people showed up,” Desai says. “One of our readers picks a book he loves, brings 50 copies, and gives them away. No publicity was ever done. Word of mouth alone has built a base of 25 to 30 regulars, with 20 or more new faces every week."
“Ahmedabad has always had a thriving reading culture,” Desai adds. “Once you start an initiative like this, people show up. You don’t need to convince anyone. You just need to give them a place and a time.”

No finish line for this run
Surat’s most striking reading initiative did not grow out of a cafe or a park. It grew out of a school principal’s resolve, sustained without a break for 116 Sundays.
Countryside International School’s Read-A-Thon appears to have no finish line. Scores of students and Surat residents have become regular visitors. The school opens its 5,000-book library and its green, peaceful campus every Sunday, all in a bid to draw people back to the printed page.

“The idea struck me during a school event,” says Sanjay Mehta, the school’s principal. “Students were insisting I sit with them. I told them I would sit with whoever was ready to read with me.” That moment stayed with him. He launched the Read-A-Thon on a Sunday and made a personal commitment to show up. Each Sunday session reserves 90 minutes for reading, which is followed by a discussion segment where insights are shared.

What reading fixed“We had a Class 3 student who was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),” Mehta says. “His parents were quite anxious about his condition. They attended the sessions with him for 50 consecutive Sundays. Gradually, the child began to settle. Through the rhythm of reading and the warmth of interactions, he became far more composed and now delivers speeches confidently.”

He recalls another case — a Class 10 student so hyperactive that he would walk out of class at any moment and wander the campus. “He began attending the Read-A-Thon sincerely, week after week. Today, he has become one of the school’s most improved students, leaving his earlier difficulties behind.” Dr Shailee Vyas, a professor at the Government Medical College in Surat, has attended more than 10 sessions with her 13-year-old son. “My son could hardly find a friend or relative who shared his love for books. When he began attending the Sunday sessions, he discovered that there are indeed others who cherish reading as deeply as he does. The environment is so conducive to reading that it compels you to seek out more such gatherings.”
To mark the initiative’s centennial landmark, the school recently released a book, “Read-A-Thon: Symphony of Silent Sundays”, a collection of reader testimonials and reflections on how the reading community has evolved on campus. “The initiative has become the most effective answer to digital distraction we have found. It reinforces the power of the printed page. Our vision is to build a strong reading community, and that is why we have not set any finish line for our Read-A-Thon,” Mehta says.


'READING TOGETHER, GROWING TOGETHER'
I’ve been a voracious reader, so discovering this community in Anand excited me. I look forward to Sundays, now. People text to see if I’m coming, save me a seat, and ask what I’m reading. That warmth makes all the difference

— Zarna Joshi, Doctor, Anand

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I keep coming back to the Sunday sessions because of my reader buddies. The conversations after the sessions add a meaningful social dimension to something otherwise solitary. I am currently reading “Being You, Changing the World” by Dain Heer

— Hemant Mehta, lawyer

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We had a Class 3 student who was diagnosed with ADHD. His parents attended 50 reading sessions with him. Through the rhythm of reading and the warmth of interactions, he became far more composed and now delivers speeches confidently.

— Sanjay Mehta, principal, Countryside International School, Surat

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“I wasn't a non-reader, but I was inconsistent. After joining the reading sessions, my focus has improved. I now try to read every day. What brings me back to the activity is the experience of reading in a tranquil environment among people who inspire you, even if many of them are still strangers to me.”

— Chintan Khakhariawala, National Dairy Development Board

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I have attended 90 sessions, reading books borrowed from the school library. The activity introduced me to non-fiction, biographies, and much more. My vocabulary and creative writing skills have improved over the past two years.

— Manashwini Patel, Student, Class 6