Meenakshi Bhalla and her World of MB ( Make Believe)

• She bore the name of an all powerful goddess, Meenakshi but all these years later, I can only recall her as an avid fan of  a very non-spiritual literary genre, that of Romantic Fiction. She was the type who makes friends easily, a nice girl, with a cheerful face and a permanent warm, smile. A trifle gawky and unstylish, but the warmth was there for all to see.We were all students of the Arts stream in the Intermediate Course at SSLNT College, Dhanbad. Dhanbad is a large coal based industrial town in Jharkand. Its demography consisted of engineers, scientists, businessmen and miscellaneous  contributors to the local Economy. It was a brave new world right out there, with technocrats and small industrialists alike toiling  to make some money in the land of the BLACK DIAMOND and the pioneering work of spreading quality education through English was being done in stages by the nuns of the Carmelite order. Carmel schools were opened at different community/ industrial colonies …..thus we had a main  and older Carmel school at Digwadih, a Suburb of Dhanbad and then another came up later in Dhanbad to meet the  demands of the growing business class there.  We, the children of this nascent very powerful socio economic order attended the different Carmel schools and our value systems were ingrained fairly early…..concentrated study in order to achieve set professional and economic goals. I have gone into great detail over this in order to highlight the general milieu and consequently, our  tastes and hobbies.
• I studied in Carmel Dhanbad and Meenakshi came from Digwadih Carmel. She was a  year junior to me but definitely very adult in her literary tastes.We were all students of SSLNT College, the only Women’s  College in the area with predominantly Hindi speaking students. The Carmel crowd, with their different and better academic accomplishments, therefore stood out. By the same token, we therefore mingled also only among ourselves, i.e. the Carmel group. I do not remember our first meeting . I suppose it must have been with a cheery, “HI! I am Meenakshi”, kind of  greeting and  very soon, a new hitherto unheard and unknown genre of books started circulating  widely in the friends’ groups. HEY PRESTO!  To the  giggling, awkward bunch from the prudish MORAL SCIENCE sermons of Sr. Felicia’s class, it was as if the floodgates of the world of Adults had been opened.
• School life had given us Enid Blyton, Richmal Cromton, Frank Richards, Alistair MacLean etc with their varied fare of adventure, fun and excitement all instilling values in mild doses. We certainly had not heard of Mills and Boon in the unsophisticated, professionally middle class world of the Dhanbad neighborhood…. our mothers were not the type who would have ever read  a Mills and Boon. They were staid, no nonsense types with their feet planted firmly on the ground and expecting the same value system in their children. Reading was greatly encouraged except during exam time. A visit to Rajendra Market definitely had a treat in store for the bibliophile- the purchase of a Famous Five or Secret Seven.
• However now the Fives and Sevens made way to the world of Adult Passion.  “Hi”, and Meenakshi’s curly head would bob uo from the covers of “ Virgin Bride” and the book would change hands after she was done. Alluring, colourful book jackets with a picture of man and woman in differing degrees of intimacy; the ubiquitous symbol of a rose tucked between the catchy logo of mills& Boon; all designed to draw the unsuspecting teenager. The  naughty childishness in us urged on to glimpse the absurd ( We were still at the stage where Romance was considered absurd) world of a Romance novel. Typically  one of the girls one day, piped up with" Man of Granite " is very good". "Why",chorused the rest.  Because the hero is unscrutable; the heroine can't read his mind and  he has very stern looks". So playing Hard to Catch and possessing dark, forbidding looks were the key to the spell that M &B books cast on the SSLNT gang.. 
• Now there is one secret, that I will let you into. Very often, a title with a voyeuristic undertone was given ,accompanied by a passionate love scene on the cover just to attract readership. Gentle romance was encouraged but not blatant permissiveness. M & B readers had their guidelines laid out…. exotic locales to set the romantic tone and mood, some intimate scenes to accelerate the path of true love and to provide meat to the reader, and the predictable ending of a happy marriage. The heroine coud have plain looks but she had to make up this deficiency with her personal qualities like smartness, elegance and a degree of female and professional independence, all of which must be sacrificed eventually in the altar of True Love. True Love was the single most goal of these women. By contrast, the hero would have perfect physical features, modelled on a Greek God ( no wonder, Greek heroes were a big favourite with the writers ) and the most essential quality of being impervious to feminine charm and guile. Of course, the heroine would succeed in bringing a change of heart after many trials and tribulations.
• So, if one got the above formula right, one made the grade  and joined the group of successful writers of the Mills and Boon books. MB’s collection tumbled onto us with audacious titles…..DARK AVENGER, HANDSOME PREDATOR and the like. To this day, I have wondered how Meenakshi managed to lay her hands on to such a big collection. How did she escape the watchful parental eye etc.?   
• Mills and Boon readers have spanned generations of women.Like so many others, I can’t understand the spell that they cast on their young readers.  Perhaps it was because of the first peek that these books offered to most of us into the fascinating world of adult behaviour.Perhaps we identified ourelves with the poor waif of a heroine who had to face  emotional challenges while struggling with the practical realities of life. Which is why it was all important for us to find out if the heroine got in the end, what she deserved.
• Otherwise M & B fiction  had very little  values or ideas to offer. If anything, these books showed their heroines in a poor light—women with no mind of their own, incapable of leading a life of economic and social independence. Finding Mr. Right was what life was all about.
• We passed out of SSLNT. The once close group of friends  dispersed and scattered to various destinations in the course of  life’s changing fortunes. I, like so many others lost touch with Meenakshi. To date, she remains elusive , as elusive as those Mills and Boon heroes that she fancied so much. But there is one thing, for sure.  I hope and believe that life dealt her a good hand; that a nice, simple girl from the back of beyond succeeded in  fulfilling her romantic  dream.
• M & B has gone desi nowadays. So young readers can read of either  Deepak or Shyam, replacement of  Peter Dedalus etc.
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