Eleventh grade student Alsaba Khan can’t stop gushing about her latest read — Girls Also Want Azadi, penned by iconic feminist figure, the late Kamla Bhasin. Khan is a resident of Bharat Nagar in Bandra East, an often-ignored slum settlement tucked away behind the manicured fringes of the glitzy Bandra Kurla Complex. After a second of careful consideration, she declares the title — which reminds girls to demand azadi to just be — as one of her favourites at the Red Boys Foundation’s 300-sq ft library. Her classmate, a chirpy Sanjana Yadav finds The Laddoo Code, a useful read. “We’ve been using the code words in the book to chat among ourselves,” she giggles, before joining her friends to name a dozen other titles that caught their fancy at the nearly-three-month-old library.

A loft in the room hosts a treehouse-style reading nook. Pics/Shadab Khan