What book lovers do when the shelves fall short...

Gautam Bhatia grew up in a house full of books. His parents would read to each other in the evening while he listened on his mother's lap. Of the passages he heard, he still remembers one — Mark Antony's funeral speech from Julius Caesar. Needless to say, Bhatia is a voracious reader who owns a lot of books — eight bookshelves full, and a few scattered here and there.

And he's possessive, though he doesn't mind lending to friends. "A year ago, I realised I had lent out so many that I was beginning to forget who had what... So, I created a word file. At present, 14 people have 37 of my books."
Books are indeed 'portable magic', as someone once said. But they're also 'things' that you buy (often for large amounts); that take up space (a lot); and need to be dusted (at least periodically). It's a hassle — one important reason why e-books are so popular. But for a core, fanatic segment, it's the physical book that remains the real McCoy.

Sayantan Ghosh, 31, for instance, has so many books that his friends complain that there's no place to sit in his house. Three of the four walls of his one-room apartment in Delhi are covered with books, and there's also a collection back home in Kolkata.

In Bengaluru, Sanjana M Vijayshankar has 3,000-odd books — some of them packed away in cartons — including a box set of Paddington Bear that she received as a gift when she was three. "I've switched houses more times than I count," says Vijayshankar. "But I enjoy packing and unpacking my books. I mostly buy second-hand copies but even if I were to become wealthy, I feel I'd only spend my money on books," she adds.

Like Vijayshankar, most bibliophiles are fascinated by second-hand books. As a young man, popular crime writer Surender Mohan Pathak would spend hours browsing through the Sunday book bazaar in Daryaganj, old Delhi. "In those piles, I found early editions of Sherlock Holmes, copies of Maya going back to 1942, and old issues of Standard Magazine," says Pathak. A few of these now occupy two walls of his study at his duplex apartment, while the rest are stacked away on the third floor of his old home in east Delhi, entirely given over to books.

But not everyone is lucky to have so much space. Radhika Yelkur in Bangalore had to give away, or sell 300 of her books when she shifted to a smaller house four years ago. Add to it the expense of keeping them properly.

Yelkur, 39, has tried many things. "When I was a student, I bought slotted, metal shelves that I could assemble myself. Later, I made shelves with wooden planks and bricks. They looked nice, but occupied much space and created an endless stream of brick debris. Also with open shelves, a huge amount of dust gathers on books," she says.

"It is a hassle," admits Delhi-based Rishi Raote, who has nearly 3,000 books, the combined collection of his family, all of whom are voracious readers. "The bookshelves available in the market are too deep and take too much space. So, about 20 years ago, we decided to ask a carpenter to design a bookshelf that is 7.5x3 feet and 9 inches deep." But they were expensive — the last, ordered in 2013, cost around Rs 50,000. In the Raote library, books are filtered by genre and then arranged alphabetically by the author's surname with certain copies being labelled 'not for lending'. The family has now decided to start giving away some of their books.

Raote may be forced to come to the decision — but there are some who do so willingly. Patna-based Abhishek Anicca, for instance, believes that books are meant to be passed on once read. In Mumbai, Anicento Pereira similarly passes on his comics to a friend, who runs a library and art center called Bombay Underground and funds it by selling donated books. "I also give away books to the local church library in the hope that more people will read them," says 38-year-old Pereira.

Perhaps, this way, a new generation of readers will get seeded.