Monday, July 17, 2006

Oh Beautiful world of Romance

Lately, I am in the process of re-discovering the simple and innocent joys of Archies' and Mills & Boons! They remind me of the carefree and restless days of teenage, the mushy imagery of the world outside, the perplexity of unknown future, the infatuations, the temptations, the enormity of unimportant issues, the girlie-gossips!!! Teenage comes alive!
Mills & Boons, for the beginners, are novels with out of the world notions of romance and passion. A gullible teenage mind comes to and tends to believe in the love portrayed by those novels. But when you grow up, you understand the innocence behind it all. A typical M&B romance would have a 19-25 year old female protagonist, and a 35-5 year old male protagonist. A female contender, who would always be older than the heroine and a male admirer, who would always be younger than the hero! The heroine would always be either a secretary or a nurse or an interior decorator or the likes. While the hero most definitely would be tycoon in whatever field that suits you. The heroine would be a delicate beauty and the hero would be a tough and rugged but extremely handsome man! And they have to keep fighting and make love off and on till the "lived happily ever after" end! So, as you can see, I have cracked the code of M&B.
I read somewhere that M&B mostly has female readers and several male authors write under female pen names because believe it or not, such romantic novels are meant for and read by women, the world over. Look at me, I have read close to 200 M&Bs. Romance always takes the tension out of the window and word looks rosy-coloured. Isn't it?

Friday, July 07, 2006

It rained last night!!!!

It was the 5th day of consecutive rains in Mumbai. A Wednesday. I had went to office on Tuesday only to find that hardly anybody had turned up, so I just ended up checking my mails and sailing through the pages on Orkut. Then we had trouble coming back home also. Since the trains had already stopped thus I had to rake my brains and decide whether to accompany my friends in a cab or just wait for the trains to start working again, no matter how much time it takes. I have a thing against taking roads in Mumbai, it takes unnecessarily loooooooong time to reach your destination and especially at a time when everyone would be rushing home, I was unable to decide whether it is sensible to take a cab home—from Worli to Andheri, that too Andheri-east!!! Anyways, I always think it is better to get stuck with 3 other people with you rather then be grounded alone as I am not very well-versed with Mumbai yet, and besides I have no other place to go, except home! So I had to give up the temptation of taking the train.
Luckily, we had no problems till Bandra, where we dropped 2 of our friends. Then we took the highway, till Vile Parle. From there, my friend’s car picked us up; and she dropped me on the Andheri Western Highway. I was relaxed after that because my place is quite close to it, so I walked till there. Since the time I have walked from my office in Worli to Andheri, it has become a standard for me. So whenever I have to decide to walk I compare it with 26th July’s experience, and I know if it is within my capacity!!!
I reached home safely, and shortly after that it started pouring like anything. So from Tue evening and the entire Wed, I had lots of time on hand. I watched TV non-stop, nothing in particular, news in general! And I read Archies’ and also started a Mills & Boon. MBs are funny things. I think it is unrealistic, senseless, too naïve and too teenager-type for me! But I still like to read these romantic novels to take the tension out of my system. It takes you to another world. It does not matter that it is still stupid. But I am not ashamed to admit that I have read more than 150 of these stupid novels. They are real stress busters.
And guess what, I am sure many people came across a fully-clothed Rakhi Sawant taking interviews yesterday, on India TV. So for CNN-IBN’s Citizen Journalist Raveena Tandon Thadani , India TV answered with Rakhi Sawant!!!Pheewwww!