On the Writer’s Shelf with Aanchal Malhotra

Aanchal Malhotra, oral historian and author

Location: New Delhi

Collection: Never counted!

 

“A shelf is not just utilitarian…it is also a thing of pleasure and joy; and you must feel that when you take a book off a shelf or when you put one back.”

 

Aanchal Malhotra grew up in a bookshop, quite literally. Her family owns and runs the iconic Bahrisons Booksellers in New Delhi, one of the capital’s most-loved bookstores, and reading has been an everyday joy since childhood, which she considers a huge privilege. So a life dedicated to books, words, and stories couldn’t be too far behind. She trained in metal engraving and worked with a printing press before turning to writing. And for the past decade, she has spent her life “writing books and listening to stories,” as she describes it.

 

The author of the critically-acclaimed non-fiction books Remnants of a Separation and In the Language of Remembering, as well as the novel The Book of Everlasting Things, Aanchal’s home is filled with bookshelves large and small that house an enviable collection.

She also has several smaller bookshelves scattered across the home: some sourced from Amar Colony furniture market in South Delhi and a few open shelves in her home office, most of which have been customised to her likes and needs. She has another unique shelf that she’s quite proud of: an “encyclopaedia” shelf, designed by her family. “In the 80s and 90s it was common for people to buy multi-volume encyclopaedias. People would come to my family’s shop and buy these alphabetical sets. Seeing that trend, my father and grandfather designed a special shelf, and, if you bought a whole set, you would get a shelf along with it. I use it for a completely different purpose though, it holds my foreign fiction and a typewriter that once belonged to my maternal grandfather. But it was designed for encyclopaedias.” 

On Aesthetics, Organisation, and Cleanliness

Aanchal admits that if she wasn’t writing or working in mental engraving, she would have been an interior designer! A self-proclaimed Type A, she is particular about the aesthetics of her environment, the cleanliness of her shelves, and organising her books properly. “I know it sounds silly, but a harmonious, pleasing environment is so much better for my productivity. I really appreciate neatness and organisation, if my table and things around it are cluttered I will not be able to work!”

She organises her books first by genre, then makes sub-categories if needed. “So there is non-fiction, commercial fiction, literary fiction, poetry, and within those genres there may be shelves for sub-categories. I have a shelf for non-fiction about Delhi for example. In addition, I have designated research shelves.”

She says balance is also important. “The balance of colour, the balance of heights, all the trinkets you put on your shelf…I feel that balance is instinctual as well. Books of a similar height and similar colour are all together. If I can group colours together within the same genre, I will.”

All of her bookshelves are open shelves, so cleaning happens regularly. The shelves undergo a basic cleaning every single day, and every two or three months she takes everything off the shelf and does a more thorough cleaning, which doubles up as an opportunity to reorganise. And once a year, the shelves are polished, and each book gets a deep clean.

On Browsing her Home Library and Choosing What to Read

Aanchal is constantly reading as part of research for her work, and she generally reads multiple books at the same time—but never two novels at once. She says, “You may mix their worlds, even if they are very different, so it will often be non-fiction and fiction or maybe a biography.” With a collection this large, and a main bookshelf this grand, choosing what to read next can be a task. But it’s one that Aanchal takes her time with.

She often finds herself standing in front of her shelf for anywhere between five to fifteen minutes (who wouldn’t want to, with such an inviting bookshelf?) looking for what to read. She says non-fiction is easier to choose than fiction. “(Non-fiction) is usually something you have wanted to read for a long time or something that pertains to your research, so it's not that complex. But with fiction you really have to be in the mindspace for certain novels.” She describes how she was recently stuck between two books. "The choice at the time was between Yellowface and The Dutch House. And simultaneously, I was reading two heavier books…I wanted a novel I could really sink into, and I wanted to read The Dutch House for a long time, but then I just decided against it and read Yellowface again, I don’t know why!”