From Staten Island to Sri Lanka: Books for the soul

Deborah Young

They just seem to collect dust on your shelves: The novels you read once and never again reopened, the text books with math equations you promptly forgot after college and the reference collections that the Internet has recently made seem so wildly obsolete.

To clear space for new literature you'll receive this holiday season, you could bring your old reads to a thrift store and hope they'll be bought, or guiltily leave them out on the street, expecting somebody will take them before the rain moves in. Some of you may have even entertained thoughts of slipping the old books into the trash - it has been known to happen.

If so, you probably do not know Harold Sirisena. Where some people see another used book, Sirisena imagines a student in Sri Lanka picking the volume up, gently touching its spine, thumbing the pages, sitting down and cherishing the chance to read.

For over two decades, the St. George resident has been a conduit for connecting the overabundance of printed material here with the overabundance of need in his home country in the Indian Ocean, where there is a 91 percent literacy rate, but because of widespread poverty, conflict and natural disasters, books are in scarce supply.

"Look at children; look at how education improves life; reading improves life for a peaceful society," said Sirisena, 62. "Books are a gift. When we stock the libraries with books, everybody has a chance to read."

You might have seen Sirisena, his wife and two daughters on one of their Saturday sojourns to Staten Island garage sales - a soft-spoken, modest man with kind eyes and white hair who has never taken donations of money for his cause - buying all the books in sight.

You might have noticed him combing the stacks at used book stores, or quietly packing up unused, old editions and publisher freebies at colleges and public libraries. You may even have caught him picking through the trash for salvageable reading material.

"I feel very hurt and very sad when I see books that have been thrown out," said Sirisena, who voice takes on tones of reverence when he speaks about the written word. "I think about the people without books in the world, and these books are worth their weight in gold."

This year 439 boxes - or more than 17,500 books - went to 85 high schools, 12 social service organizations, seven universities and a botanical garden. Used eyeglasses also went to a doctors' association. The treasures ranged from children's picture stories, to classics by Emerson, Hemingway and Dickens to hundreds of science, math and computer texts.

Collections of vinyl records - fast becoming an anachronism here - went to a school for the blind. The Bronx Botanical Garden donated 60 boxes of books and journals to stock the library of a new botanical garden in the south of the country, where efforts are being made now to protect the canopy that has been depleted in recent decades.

There is always a need for globes, maps and astronomy books for the people deeply attuned to the rhythms of the natural world and shifts of the stars in the night sky.

"To me it's the same as everything in this country and the rest of the world. We have too much of everything on every level," said Myra Hauben, a chemistry professor at the College of Staten Island, who, along with her colleagues last year, donated to Sri Lankan college students promotional copies of text books which otherwise just take up space in their offices.

"I'm delighted to be able to send them." Since 1985, when Sirisena and his wife first mailed two boxes of books from the St. George Post Office, the mission has grown into a vocation for them, with networks of people helping in both continents.

They began working with a shipper in the 1990s, and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami put an international spotlight on the country and the Staten Island Buddhist Vihara, Port Richmond, where Sirisena packs and stores the donations, the project has grown.

"Even used pencils, pens, everything is needed," said Sirisena, recalling how a casual conversation struck up on the ferry with two nuns from the now-shuttered St. Paul's School, New Brighton, resulted in all three of them leaving the ferry terminal at 10 p.m. to collect erasers, pencils and other materials for some of the children affected by the tsunami.

For Sirisena, who grew up too poor to afford shoes, the gift of a few books from teachers - including a cherished work by Socrates -inspired him to pursue an education and a chemistry degree.

After moving to the U.S. 27 years ago, he worked his way from gas station attendant to his current position as an administrator at City Tech in Brooklyn.

"What they used to do during our time, is the school had one book and the teacher read and it we took notes," said Sirisena, about his childhood. "You couldn't find the books in the library."

It is still true today, he said. Children in rural areas who receive the gift of books from Staten Island often cannot afford stamps to send thank you letters. The cards - and there have been many - are usually taken to local Buddhist temples, where the monks bundle the letters together and send them.

"Here we are in the land of abundance where we have so much at our disposal. To be able to benefit somebody overseas, with what we consider excess, is wonderful," said Louis Blois, a math professor at the College of Staten Island, one of many professors at CSI as well as Columbia University, the New School and other institutions thankful for Sirisena's regular visits to pack up the books that would otherwise languish.

"I was very able to open up my shelves and my heart to the people of Sri Lanka." Donated books can be dropped off at the Staten Island Buddhist Vihara, 115 John St. 718-556-2051.

Staten Island Advance/SILive.com