Virgins On My Shelf

I have been a voracious reader all my life, and worse, a compulsive buyer of books. I
believe I buy, on an average, two books when only one gets read. Perhaps an overestimation of
my stamina and capacity.
I owe my disposition of buying books to a chance quote on The Thought for the Day: a
book worth reading is a book worth buying. I came across it at an impressionable age and took
it too literally converting the thought for the day into a liability of a lifetime.
My modest middle-class dwelling started proliferating with books. Eyebrows were raised.
Space crunch was cited. It reached a point when all eyes followed me like that of the sailors who
accused the Ancient Mariner of killing the albatross and hung it round his neck. My albatross was
my books. The joy of bringing new books home was somewhat clouded when one wondered
where to accommodate them.
The process had started tentatively with an improvised shelf nailed to the wall. When it
started spilling over a three-tier rack was introduced. Subsequently more tiers were added till they
groaned under their own weight. Then a glass-paneled almirah show-casing its contents was
brought in. Then another… I find myself in the predicament of a man who can afford to buy a car
or two but has no space to park.
I can conveniently divide my personal collection of books into a binary: the books that
have been read and the books that are yet to be read. I like to call them the ‘brides’ and the
‘virgins’. Virgins on my shelf tend to outnumber the brides betraying my zeal over my vigour.
Obviously, it is easier to buy books than to read them.
Fresh virgins remain prominently displayed in the front row with the gentleman’s
promise that as soon as I am done with my current read I would turn to them. I would eye them
for weeks with affectionate anticipation. As weeks turned into months they induced a feeling of
guilt laced with helplessness. As the months turned into years I would archive them to a relegated
corner lest their presence lie heavy on my conscience. Over time the corner became a wing in its
own right looming over the bridal beauties wrapped in their smugness.
One characteristic of the virgins on my shelf is that they are all thick-waisted tomes. One
needs guts of a kind to delve into the depths of their folds to discover their ever-elusive G-spot.
For each such tome one might as well enjoy the company of a quartet of slim sexy volumes. They
offer variety – the ultimate spice of life! And if you are not really pleased it is not much of a loss.
You just shrug it off. A tome can’t be shrugged off. It commands commitment which in today’s
hectic schedule is a hard commodity to come by.
Not all of them are sumo giants, though. Some are slick handsome editions gifted to me
by my friends who know my fondness for books and are glad that they don’t have to think twice
what to gift me. Trouble is their gift-list rarely coincides with my wish-list. I thank them for their
thoughtful gesture and routinely add the new arrivals to my harem of virgins.
There is a sudden spurt among the inmates of the virgin wing when a book fair is in town.
The sprawling premises, the plethora of eye-catching titles, the tempting bargains, all lead one to
buy them by the bagful. With passage of time only one or two get read the rest join the company
of the virgins. Even after decades of experience I am none the wiser for it. One reason could be
my implicit trust in a real life truism that every virgin is a potential bride. That keeps me
accumulating them while I can. With my self-persuasive logic I try to rationalize: a man is known
not only by what he reads, but also by what he intends to read.
Some long standing virgins on my shelf have turned into chronic spinsters. There seems
little prospect of their being read now. They carry the seal of classics on them: Joyce’s Ulysses,
Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Galsworthy’s Forsythe Saga, Marquez’s One Hundred Years of
Solitude, Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, Seth’s The Suitable Boy, Chandra's Sacred Games
et al. They all suffer from congenital obesity. Amartya Sen, who always looked very promising

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when I bought him with the aura of a Nobel attached to him, invariably failed to engage me. Too
abstruse, too convoluted! Not in my league, I sadly concluded. There he stands, among the
virgins, as if a bride!
The virgins are all merit-worthy. After all that’s why I bought them in the first place.
They come with formidable credentials flaunting the tags of Classics or Nobels or Bookers. Tags
may induce me to buy them, to bring them home, but may not always entice me to get intimate
with.
A book may remain a neglected virgin on my shelves for years, yet I turn extremely
possessive when a casual visitor to my place shows interest in her and wants to borrow her for a
hurried honeymoon. Denying access to her vehemently, I tell him, “Lay off, man! She’s my
virgin, not a street hooker for anyone to divert himself with.” Come to think of it I am equally
possessive of my brides as well. However, if I were to choose between the two I would rather part
with a bride than with a virgin.
There are quite a few books on my shelves that defy the categorical distinction between
brides and virgins. They are the half-read books. I initiated the intercourse with them but finding
it a chore rather than a pleasure put them aside with the vague hope that I would consummate the
act some other day when I am in a more receptive frame of mind. Over the years, however, I have
noticed that I rarely, if ever, go back to an abandoned book. I may revisit a bride, I may shack up
with a plump virgin, but an abandoned book remains a persona non grata.
Whenever in past I picked up a half-read book I faced the dilemma of whether to start it
all over again or to continue it from where I had left it last. In either case I felt that I should have
gone the other way round. That reaffirmed my resolve to let the quasi-virgins be.
I often get visitors who marvel at the number of books on my shelves and ask with a
skeptical awe, “Have you read them all?” It’s a rhetorical question rather than a genuine query. It
implies if you have read so many books how come you are a mere college lecturer and not a
sought-after sage or a consultant at UNESCO.