Mills & Boon

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 I grew up reading books written by English authors. School books n library ones had foreign authors writing in English. There were not too many fiction books for us in English written by Indian authors.  We called all fictional books ' Novels' and all school text books were 'Books'. 

  I started reading Mills & Boon after my eleventh grade. The authors were UK , USA and Australia based. Read about moors, cold weather with the dark ocean and the hills around. The fog on the sea or the mountains with biting cold is what romance was all about. Men were dark with blue grey eyes n long hair till the nape of the neck. In those books, the guy always took the girl to an isolated log cabin or a castle in the vineyards. In those places, there were hardly any people around. For miles, no one and not even a passing car. This was not a wilderness I knew of in India. In this foreign isolation, the couple was busy fighting or smouldering with passion. 

 Recently I  read a Mills n Boon by an Indian author. There were no voluptuous girlfriends, no friendly housekeepers and certainly no ancestral castles. Only the crowded Mumbai and its hotspot Marine Drive. I could not find any situation romantic, though the author had tried her best to add passion in the everyday circumstances. But where is passion when you are cleaning after a party at home and you are scared the maid will come to know you have slept with a guy? This type of daily affairs, to read seemed more torturous than enjoyable.
For me, those scenarios can't be created in Mumbai or any Indian city. The population is so much that I can't imagine unexplored beauty in the vicinity of the city. Everything is concretised all over and the dirt and muck. Yes, Kashmir n Himachal Pradesh, North east n West Bengal have the mountains and the cold weather, but no sea there. The sizzling chemistry can't be visualised with a thirty something, pan chewing sweaty plump man. No one with the cowboy looks riding a horse on the outback in India. The Indian weather does not permit the Mills & Boon romance. This is not a reference to the Indian men and it is not to offend someone.

In the older Mills&Boon, the man and woman kept fighting and had really interesting slanging matches with great imagination and articulation of the language. Nowadays, the focus is on quick sex and more. A little twist in the tale is added but not as gripping as the books written by earlier authors. No grey shades happening anywhere. The books used to be about love, passion and living for a cause. This is almost missing in the new books written by new authors.  The Mills & Boons were in different categories like Classic, Doctor  Nurse, Historical, Modern etc.

Just like we think, our childhood was the best, our cousin's mehndi sangeet was the best, the school farewell we gave to the seniors was the best, Similarly, the Mills&Boons I read in my youth were the best. 

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