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These books are still a boon
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Admit it. We've all read them. Those steamy bodice-rippers with saturnine heroes who melt their heroines with a single glance. So, whatever happened to paperback romances?
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THREE OF my colleagues are scrambling for two Mills and Boon paperbacks. Leena says to one of those not involved in the tug-of-war: "Hey, Priya, give me a few M&Bs, ya." When Priya answers that she has none, Leena is surprised: "But what about your daughter, doesn't she read them? How old is she? Isn't she sixteen?"
It turns out that not only this daughter but many daughters at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen or more are not reading Mills and Boon any more, or Barbara Cartland, or Victoria Holt, for that matter.
In fact, many are not reading at all. Something that makes you feel sad.
Some have no time. At fifteen, they are busy swotting for CET already. At sixteen they are still swotting for CET. At seventeen and eighteen there are more exams. Everyone I speak to is writing some exam or the other, many of them nervous, rattled, tense, some plain unhappy.
In between, they are busy cooling off, chilling out in other ways. Says Sheela, who's just written a number of entrance exams: "After all this studying - and I study all the time - I don't want to see any more printed words. I watch TV, and I play badminton."
"Mills and Boon, what's that?" asks Varuni, who has just passed out of Class 12 and is reading for the Indian Statistical Institute entrance exams. Varuni has never heard of M&B, but she sure reads.
" ... Gerald Durrell, James Herriot... My favourite is Roald Dahl. And then I read Robin Cook, and I read some of these science books on genetics and things like that. They aren't like textbooks; they're easy to read. I also like Stephen King."
Varuni's mother says she is glad that Varuni is not reading Mills and Boon, but adds that she wished Varuni would give up Stephen King!
Samita, 20, who's doing an arts course in one of the City's many colleges, asks: "Mills and Boon? No. I can watch a Hindi movie that's much more romantic. And less of a strain. These books have people with silly names."
Talking of silly names, let me tell you about Kanak Seshadri, who taught us T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland for B.A. (and did a damn good job of it, though Aruna said, "You know, Kanak's explanation of Wasteland is even more difficult than Eliot.") and the Mills and Boon incident.
It was on an afternoon of The Wasteland, and Aruna and gang were bemoaning the need to study English at all.
Kanak says: "I will one day write a Mills and Boon. And then you will finally say, `I understood every word.'"
The class hoots. Aruna stands up and hoots.
"But you need humour, ma'am," says Aruna.
"But of course," says Kanak with a smirk, "Sample my opening scene. Heroine's train pulls onto desolate country station, miles from the hero's country mansion. She is of course, young, beautiful and stormy, and he, tall, fatally attractive and difficult. No one is in sight; she waits, she waits, and she waits, getting furiouser and furiouser by the second.
Eventually, the hero strides on stage, walks up to her and says, `Madame I'm savage.' For his name is Jason Savage. And she replies, `Sir, I'm wilder.' For her name is Anne Wilder."
The class was in splits. Aruna did not get the joke.
Which makes me think there's more to reading Mills and Boon.
Poornima, now 37, a computer engineer, who on a rainy day curls up with an umpteenth reading of English, August and quotes from memory lines and lines of Godel, Escher Bach; or Prasanna, 39, lecturer in English, who's pretty much made a vocation of reading, and knows everything from Cardus to Wodehouse through Tolstoy and Woody Allen, used to read Mills and Boon.
Prasanna says: "I used to read Mills and Boon. They were fun. I don't now, though I could."
Poornima does, even now. Whenever she's travelling from Baroda to Bangalore, she goes to the footpaths near one of Mumbai's stations and picks up a "... few Mills and Boon for ten bucks each and my journey is taken care of".
Why do people read romances? The feminist writer Alison Light suggests that to conclude that such readers are simply stupid is silly, that "both text and reader are more complicated than that".
And goes on to say that we must remember "... literature is a source of pleasure, passion, and entertainment".
She also points out that the patterns of romance reading are revealing, because readers often collect hundreds of these books which are then recycled amongst friends, "...Reading romance means participating in a kind of subculture... "
The subcultures of participation for young girls don't seem to have much need for romances (or indeed for romance itself).
On another day, it might be interesting to see what substitutes exist in those places. But for now, let me go and see if I can dig up a good Mills and Boon.
KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH
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