A Girl who Giggled at the Sight of Love Story

Of course this kindergarten like colouring isn't anything
like the charming book cover we sneaked at!

When I saw a book named World’s Greatest Love Stories in my house library, I giggled mischievously. It was a hard bound book, with an elegant purple jacket on which ‘Love Stories’ was written in bright pink italics. I giggled because I thought, “Haww! Papa bought love stories.” Not only did he buy it, he placed it in a shelf where I could access it. I wanted to read it because I was not supposed to read it. When I picked up Romeo and Juliet in school library, the librarian took it away. She stared at me before smiling and saying, “Choose another book, this one’s not for you.” Disheartened, I thought, “It’s not for me because it is about love.” Somehow in the collective consciousness of my friends and me, Romeo and Juliet had settled itself as the greatest love story. You see, I did not want to read love stories because I knew what they were. Rather, I wanted to read them because I knew it was forbidden at the age of ten.

I didn’t dare to pick World’s Greatest Love Stories from the shelf in the days or the years that followed. So, I watched the Hindi cinema and all the K-serials, drooling on the characters falling in love in slow motion as a romantic song kept playing on an empty road in the dead of the night.  I call them my guilty pleasure now.

Growing up, my parents encouraged me to move from comics to novel. By then, my brother was smitten by the Harry Potter series. I had seen the first couple of movies in the series. I had loved Hermione Granger. But, oh! What a pain it was to read The Philosopher’s Stone. I knew, novels (read, elongated stories in tiny fonts) were not meant for me. I was 12 when I heard my mother complain, “What a terribly slow book it is! I cannot read how one puts down the tea cup and picks it up again to take a sip.” I was intrigued. I liked a good challenge. So, I picked up One Night @ the Call Centre. Did I regret reading the novel? Yes. At the same time I had read my first novel. Alas! It was just not a love story.

Thanks to Hindi cinema and its clichéd portrayal of love, I was aware of a book named Love Story. I wanted to read it. I wondered if there was a right way to bring up the subject with my parents.  I concluded, maybe not. I picked up Shobha De’s Sisters. My father said, “You can read it, but wait for a few years.” I went back to reading my comics – Tinkle, Pinki, Chacha Choudhary  - and Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven and The Famous Five. But mostly, I read my textbooks. Classes 6 to 8 were my glorious academic years, after all.

I was 15 when I read my first love story. It was the story of a human smitten by a vampire, so it counted more as a fantasy than romance. At 16, I told my father that I wanted to read The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks because it was suggested by a reliable friend. I had no idea about the story in the book. It took months to get hands on it. Online shopping wasn’t as common as it is now and the book had to be imported - the hardbound version. When the book was finally delivered, I was disappointed. Why did such a thin book cost INR 800? My father and I laughed, “Let’s see what it is about then!”

I began reading The Notebook. It took me seven days to complete reading it. Then, I read it again in a day. It was just a love story, but it also described making love, leaving out the biological details. I asked my father to order some more books – others by Sparks, The Truth about Forever by Sarah Dessen, some by Cecelia Ahern, and the Travelling Pants series by Ann Brashares. He went on to the extent of printing the second book of the Travelling Pants series because it wasn’t available in India. From love stories, I moved to the much needed self care and I didn’t have to read an inspirational or motivational book.

Eventually, my father and I got Eric Sehgal’s oh-so-famous Love Story – the one from the Hindi movies. After reading it during a one-hour flight, I said, “I don’t like it, Nicholas Sparks expresses feelings better; I don’t understand why Sehgal is so famous!” My father was amazed. Later, we concluded, it’s famous because Sehgal was one of a kind when the book was out. Perhaps, people didn’t have many choices in love stories. Or, maybe, just maybe, they too were intrigued by the terms ‘Love Story’ in public view and access.

As reading love stories became an integral part of my life, my mother often said, “If you read your textbooks with as much dedication as story books, it might do your grades some good.” Then, she laughed, every single time, knowing I wasn’t really paying attention to her words with my nose inside a book. At 17, I was so smitten by the American writers that the Indian love stories with their Bollywood like romance began to seem, ‘without a class.’

When one of my classmates, a close friend, asked to borrow Two States and I too had a Love Story, I agreed without much thought. I didn’t like those books. In fact, I often wondered, “why did everyone cry reading the latter?” My friend was so smitten by the stories that she didn’t want to return the books. I considered asking my parents if she can keep the books for I had no particular inclination towards them. Before I could speak at home, her father called me one evening to ask about the books. Without any consideration, I said that the books belonged to me. He asked me the name of the books. I named them. He repeated after me, “Two states and I too…” His words faded out. In his hesitation to say a certain word, I understood that he didn’t like the idea of these books being read by his daughter. I tried to create a cover-up story. I failed miserably. I didn’t know how to lie for something that wasn't even a crime. He hung up and never spoke about the same. Next day, I was informed that she had hidden the books under her mattress. She had read them under her blanket at night with the torch from her phone. All I could think was, ‘She isn’t seven, she is seventeen!’ With that thought, I let it pass.

Years passed. I couldn’t be satisfied by people falling in love (or, making love for that matter) anymore. I liked the presence of love in other stories, mostly about individual and society. Now when I pass by a shelf tagged Romance in a book store, I smile thinking I have read my share. I read the works of Sparks and there ceased my curiosity for love. I read them all, felt them too, but they never seemed real, even when I was seventeen. Even if they were real, they weren’t my story. And, if they weren’t mine, then they were just fictions to my mind.

I look back at the girl who giggled at the sight of two insignificant words. I look back and thank her for not sneaking the book out of the shelf to her room and reading it with a torch light when her parents slept. I am glad that as rebellious as she was in some things, she was wise in picking her books. Imagine reading a love story at the age of seven, not understanding a bit, and hence concluding that the genre didn't make sense. So, I am grateful that the girl was impatiently patient enough till her parents were completely okay with the knowledge that their daughter was reading love stories. They probably could have done without the discussion that followed every time she completed a book, but well, she had to say things out loud. Somehow, she ended up reading the books that didn’t have the words on the cover page that made her giggle. She read books, not knowing what to expect. And as much as she dwelt in the world of fiction, I really do thank her for knowing better – for knowing it wasn’t her story, for knowing that love stories merely weren’t the ways of the world.