Romance in the new age

GIRLS are brought up to accept themselves as naturally dependent, entitled to lean on the greater strength of men and finally become crippingly dependent on that man in their relationships. That would in short sum up the ideal woman of the 1950s and 60s: One who was soft, at least on the exterior, depended on the man to do the little things of life for her, became cringingly impotent in a tense, nerve-wracking situation and had to be bailed out by the man naturally - tall, dark, handsome, charming and suave. Rich or otherwise. Sounds typically like the formula that the evergreen, ever-popular Mills and Boon novels followed. But as the hip 1970s gave way to the swinging 1980s and the sinning 1990s, almost overnight the M and B formula was trashed by more than one icon of the today generation, leaving only fragments of it for the women of yesteryear.

Today's urban, professional young thing need not depend on the man in her life to rescue her, she need not even wait for him to change a flat tyre. She has her own gold credit card, drives a zingy sort of car and hops with ease from one airport to another. In addition, she is not in syrupy sweet romances, does not cootchie coo and need not even say no to pre-marital sex. There is, indeed, almost a terrific role reversal and suddenly, the Mills and Boon writing formula seems to be up against all odds, gradually losing out to the professional, urban young thing who deals with more panache and body in her life than ever before.

Women's reading tastes too seemed to have catapulted much the same way. Gone are the days of soft women searching for the right man in wide-eyed innocent wonderment. Suggestions of romance blighted every page but seldom went beyond the realm of stolen kisses, whether in passion or anger. The man was always aloof, dignified, charming and restrained. The woman, soft, couldn't voice her true feeling and never let him see anything but silhouettes of her form. But times have changed. Some of the M and B writers too evolved, giving a little more run to their fierce imagainstion, but only that much. Recently, a regular writer for Mills and Boon, Mary-Jo Wormell left them and decided to set up her own publishing house called Heartline. She said that M and B novels were too prudish and not in tune with changing times and tastes when women prefer things aimed at the alienated urban professional woman, who, to quote the Guardian, prefers "more wit and grit" than the M and B kind of romance. Wormell is just one of the many writers to have left the M and B fold, though, according to others, the formula that the M and B novel handed out year after year still remains valid.

According to Ms. Norma Curtis who chairs the Romantic Novelists Association, the fifty-something generation brought up on M and Bs is falling away. Kalyani Rajan, now in her late thirties, said that she "was a late starter as far as reading Mills and Boons novels went." She was introduced to them in the last year of college and said she read tonnes of them because they seemed good fun and easy to read.

Interestingly though, bookshops reported no major drop in sales and felt that they still had a rather loyal clientele who pursued the M and B books with as much passion as they did anything else. According to the owner of Bookmark in New Delhi, Suparan Vaidik, he sold at least 50 to 80 sets of the books through a year. That, he felt, was a sizable amount.

Most women in their late forties or fifties who have grown up on a diet of M and B books through adolescence feel that today they have moved on. As far as the younger lot is concerned, the verdict is stunningly brutal: "Do they read at all?" was the query. According to Ms. Kavita Kapoor, who works with a helpline NGO, "One of the saddest things today is that girls are not reading. Forget Mills and Boon. In any case, I think the young urban professional woman would definitely prefer a book with more to it than a sweet romance. They would probably leaf through Cosmopolitan or Elle or turn to the Net for information. But yes, the few who do read, I think, would prefer books that are a little more hard-core, graphic and something that they can identify with. After all, they do often see themselves in the role of the pursuor, not necessarily the pursued."

And so it may be a matter of time before the M and B formula dies a natural death or is phased into extinction. That is until its organisers give the authors a little more scope for bod and bawd.

SUCHITRA BEHAL

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