Comment

It was a journey I won’t easily forget. My co-passengers in the train from Delhi to Mumbai were a pair of twin sisters in their late teens. The one on the upper berth consumed one Mills and Boon after the other without a pause, not even to eat. Remember, the journey takes about 16 hours! The other, on the lower berth, was as intensely immersed in her book on Vedanta.

I could go on about how twins can be opposites. But this column is about romance and love and romantic heroes, given the fact that it is that time of the year and love is supposed to be in the air. At least, of the manufactured, Hallmark card marketable kind.

The young lady on the train set me thinking about the M&B addiction. Why were so many Indian women, young and middle-aged, so entranced by the steel-jawed, predominantly sullen and indifferent heroes? And who was the blueprint for that man at the end of the rainbow who came in so many guises and, in the never-never-land of powder pink fiction, straddled several centuries?

Why was relatively easy. Perhaps some of it had to do with the poetic legacy handed down (especially to the Eng Lit types) about unheard melodies being sweeter — that the yearning had more power to it than its fulfillment. Or, more likely, the assumption that the hard-to-get, above-your-league type was the ideal object for your affections. The elusive has always had more cachet, if not more staying power in the imagination. Remember that most of these books, like many of our Hindi films, end with marriage: they never really go further into the happily ever after that probably includes, snores, bores and chores.

And so began an extremely informal, ad hoc round of questioning M&B addicts amongst nieces, friends and their progeny. The name that popped up most often was Mr Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. (Partial disclosure: my hero, too, for a long time.) Now, this I thought was a remants-of-the-Raj thing. Something Indians, along with other members of the Commonwealth, had inherited from the British. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw how obsessed many American women are with Jane Austen (particularly P&P).

One of the few bankable pleasures in a cold clime-Washington DC in February, for instance, with its icy winds and slippery roads is browsing at a snail’s place through the Barnes & Noble bookshop. You can while away hours in a far corner of the Starbucks café in the shop and read a slim novel from start to finish. And that is just what I did this week, in part to get away from the frenzy of the American presidential campaigns and the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton slinging matches.

Austenmania is obviously at high tide here. There was a whole section with books, not only by and about Jane Austen, but by Jane Austen wannabes. Take writer Elizabeth Aston, with at least half a dozen spin-offs from Pride and Prejudice alone: Mr Darcy’s Daughters, The Second Mrs Darcy: a Novel, The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, The Darcy Connection and The True Darcy Spirit (set partially in India).

Ms Ashton, who went to Oxford, may have a few literary flourishes, but there isa host of other, less talented authors who have relentlessly milked the Jane Austen cow. Some are puerile sequels, many of which have been called ‘fan fiction’. Not only has there been an avalanche of Austen-related chick lit, adaptations of some of her novels and yet another biopic Miss Austen Regrets are currently being aired on American television.

One recent Delhi winter, after dinner, a group of friends sat long into the night talking about who our favourite literary heroes and heroines were. Most of the men present couldn’t come up with a name — one lone brave soul named Anna Karenina. As for the women, you guessed it: Mr Darcy.

I wish I had asked that twin on the train the same question.

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com