The Love Asana: India's first homegrown Mills & Boon book
You don’t watch "The Ugly Truth" expecting "True Romance." I kept that in mind when I sat down with "The Love Asana," India’s first homegrown Mills & Boon title.
Besides, I undid any claim I might have had to literary snobbery when I picked up all four books of the "Twilight" series and read them faster than it took Bella to raise an eyebrow and bite a lip.
"The Love Asana" is authored by 45-year old Milan Vohra after she won the first of publisher Harlequin's on-going "aspiring author auditions."
Before reading a romance novel you already know two things: it is a love story written for women and it will end well. In that regard Vohras book adheres to the tenets of the genre but beyond that, it's nothing you haven't heard before.
A playboy billionaire finds himself unwittingly in love with the blameless, self-sacrificing heroine he misjudges right from the beginning. Originally bent on using her to exact revenge on her brother he gradually sees the error of his ways and his unexpected feelings for her transform him into a better man.
This could be the skeleton for over a dozen mediocre romance novels but even once fleshed out the story of "The Love Asana" is unable to achieve originality.
Syrupy synopsis
Pari, the heroine of the book, is an innocent yoga instructor who has just managed to get away from a violent father and a deceitful boyfriend. Her determination to stay afloat and find her independence is thwarted by Vivan’s plans for revenge. Vivan exploits Pari’s love and obligations to her brother, by refusing to give Deepak Dewan the business he needs to keep his company alive unless Pari gives herself up to him for his “pleasure.”
“As and where I wish. In my bed. My office. My homes. My pool…” he stipulates.
But this is a romance novel and Pari has to remain an honest woman so just after the reader has been sufficiently tantalized, Vivan takes it one step further and includes marriage as a precondition.
When Pari cannot understand why any man in their right mind would want to be tied down to her, Vivan reveals that having a wife would help get rid of his playboy reputation. A reputation -- created in part by photographs of Vivan with an unnamed “Hollywood sex symbol” -- that discredits him in the eyes of a business client.
The marriage that takes place under duress, for revenge and as an elaborate PR stunt, unconvincingly morphs into something genuine. Despite the cold calculations that brought Pari and Vivan together, they find themselves unable to deny the heat and magnetism seething beneath their apparently detached exteriors.
To add to the tension and to redeem the hero from his earlier sleaziness, Vivan claims he will not touch Pari until she willingly gives herself up to him. This is where all the allusions to burning and melting and longing and forbearing come into play.
After a few misunderstandings are cleared, prejudices dispelled and pride subdued, the two, Pari and Vivan, find themselves in a real marriage, sanctified not by a contract and a ritual, but by love.
Risque business
Although the plot is clichéd and uninteresting I was, admittedly, very amused by the distinctly Indian scenarios used creatively as settings for some seriously loaded sexual symbolism.
Milan Vohra admits she finds the innuendo “hilarious.” She says, “It’s great fun if you don’t allow yourself to take it seriously.”
Most readers of romance novels, willing to admit the fetish in the first place, claim they do not take the books seriously. It is entertainment.
A good romance novel has just the right amount of reality for the reader to relate and just the right amount of fantasy for the reader to escape. The trick however, is that the fantasy must be believable. Believable like a well-written astrological forecast for wishful readers.
It is precisely because of this element of escapism, however, that many regard romance novels as trash and their readers as shallow.
Vohra says she disagrees with these elitist views of literature that define what is good and what is not.
“There are no good or bad genres,” she avers. “A book is either an interesting or satisfying read or not.”
Writers like Margaret Mitchel, Jane Austen and more recently Lorreta Chase would earn the respect of anyone disdainful of this genre but if you were looking to give contemporary Indian romance literature a shot I would not start with "The Love Asana."
