Possessed by books

If you are one of those people who frequent bookstores on a regular basis, you might have chanced upon an ageing gentleman stepping into a bookstore, holding a black briefcase-like bag in his left hand and a stick in the right, which he carries to feel his way around. He is steadily losing his eyesight and cannot read even the title of a book, much less the words on the page. Yet he goes on buying books. Why and how?

He goes to a bookstore and inquires about new arrivals. He has been buying books for so many years that the bookstore owner invariably knows his taste and shows him books that might appeal to him. He then strains his eyes to read the titles and asks the owner to read out the blurbs, before deciding to buy them. He usually buys books by the armload. Owning books is his source of satisfaction.

Over the years, Shailendra Kumar Singh has bought over twenty thousand books (and that by a conservative estimate) that fill up his entire house, from floor to ceiling, lining the walls of the corridor even. He has a simple rule. He never lends his books to anyone, not even his only daughter. ‘If she wants to read, she can always come over to my place,’ he says.  

Many would find that amusing. Not me. I know how obsessively possessive one can be about books. Sheeba Shivangani Shah, the author most recently of Facing the Phantoms, too is highly possessive of her books and doesn’t let her teenage daughters come near them. If they insist on reading one of her books, she buys them another copy instead.  

I am no less possessive about my books. At times, when one of my family members takes my books to their room from my personal library, I go bring them back. Books missing from my bookshelves make me as anxious as parents would be when their teenage daughter doesn’t come home early; I toss and turn in bed wondering who might have taken them.

Fortunately, I haven’t had to spend many nights in book-induced anxiety. That’s because I know where a particular book is like the back of my hand and a quick scan of the bookshelves is enough for me to find out if a book is missing. Then, I can immediately play detective and go about tracing the missing book.

There are ways to find out if anyone has toyed with your books. For example, a book might have been pushed an inch deeper or there might be a gaping hole left by a book taken out. These make the task of keeping tab on your books much easier.

An illustration: a onetime fan of magic realism, I have a few Gabriel Garcia Marquez books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude at home. This book of books, sits cheek-by-jowl with other Marquez books. One day when I came home, I saw a small opening between books where One Hundred Years of Solitude had once sat snuggly and asked my parents if anyone had come home that day. They told me that my brother’s friend had. I then asked my brother if his friend had taken the book. He replied in the affirmative. I demanded that he get the book back as soon as his friend was done with the reading. He did, in due time. And I felt relieved.

I find being in the company of books deeply reassuring. Needless to say, I hate to lend books—and for another reason too. The books you lend usually don’t come back to you. (I am still waiting for friends to return books they borrowed from me ages back!) And if it does, it rarely comes back in the mint condition that you lent it in. How many times has your jaw dropped at the sight of your books upon return? Sometimes, they come back with their spines broken, pages dog-eared and soiled and covers looking like the wings of a bird about to take off!

But, my possessiveness notwithstanding, I would find it difficult to say no to the requests of my closest friends to lend them books or to disappoint young friends who look up to you for guidance. For such eventualities, I have made some rules:

1) Don’t lend more than two books at a time. And make sure that these are done and dusted and returned, before lending others.

2) Don’t lend a book for more than a week. One who doesn’t/can’t read a book in a week is not a reader and doesn’t deserve to be lent a book. 

3) Maintain a record of books lent, so that you can refer to it when your memory plays tricks on you.

4) Have the person who borrows your books read an article by Pradeep Sebastian before lending them a book. The article lays out some dos and don’ts about reading/handling a book—like, wash your hands and apply talcum powder before opening a book, don’t fold the tip of a page to mark the page that you have reached, don’t roll the pages and only read a book by opening it slightly.

But these rules haven’t yielded the desired results. A bhai has yet to return two books—Red Dust and Plain English—that he borrowed from me some two years back. Last time I met him, he said, “I will photocopy them and return them to you.” A friend hasn’t returned An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World by Pankaj Mishra that he borrowed I don’t know how many years ago. When I inquired about the book, he said, shamelessly, that he hadn’t read it but he would soon. And the list goes on.

No wonder, I have decided to follow in the steps of Shailendra Kumar Singh. Don’t

ever ask me for a book. I know you will not, from now on!

Posted on: 2013-03-10 08:35

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