I was asked a few days back by someone to recommend romantic novels which make for a heart warming read. I don't know what all names I blurted out under the assumed pressure of answering quick, but the question stuck by in my head for a decently long time there after. When I answered it for myself, I spotted five romantic books distinctly embedded in my memory which by far have been the best I have stumbled upon. Since romance as a literary genre encompasses a lot, I will specify that what I am about to share with my readers today are 5 of the best 'Love Stories' I have read, which I strongly recommend to you all as well. An important caveat, before I share my favorites, is that my reading habits are not the best around. I mean, I read a lot, but according to some literature aficionados, I read crap. Anyway, I often fall in love with even what is otherwise condemned as crap. So, not sticking to any stereotypes, from a wide variety of sub-genres- here are 5 love stories which conversed straight with my heart and whose essence flowed out through tears in my eyes.

#1 Olivia and Jai by Rebecca Ryman 

Historical Fiction, I guess.

I found this book in a dusty, dingy corner of my college library. Picking it up on instinct, I could never even have imagined what an emotional rigmarole this book had planned to offer me. Set up during the earlier years of British Raj in India, this story, if I remember correctly, is the tale of two lovers haunted by a long history of family rivalries. Olivia, an American tourist in India and Jai Raventhorne, a local born of an Anglo-Indian union have nothing in common save an inherited animosity. However, they find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other and soon their attraction metamorphoses into passion. This passion is not only evident in their love, but also in their actions of vengeance on each other. To see the plot unravel, fluctuating between love, passion, animosity and revenge is a thrilling experience. Someone from you please remind me to read this book again :)


#2 The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer
Fantasy fiction- Romantic fiction
Enough had been said and heard about this book. You can look down upon me for all I care, but I am in love with Edward Cullen, as much as I am in love with Bella Swan's character. Stephenie Meyer has constructed a scintillating plot, playing marvelously on an average girl's insecurities and an her dreams of a perfect lover. I have read the whole series twice over, and I will not shy away from burying myself in those familiar pages again when the depression of our 'practical' existence (the practicality even extending to matters of heart) becomes too much to handle.


#3 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Literary Classic
Need I say anything about this epic love tale which females of all age, around the world have read, and reread and romanticized over and over again? The story of unconsummated passion between Cathy and Heathcliff is a saga in its own self. The narrative of this book is not all flowery, but very dark, almost progressing like a mystery. Perhaps that is why this book was met with censure at first, but over the years has acquired ascendancy among romantic classics. Heathcliff is a character  immortalized in our memory, as that dark and intense hero- capable of passion, and capable of destruction too. Sigh. The wonderful Yorkshire moors. The intense yet unresolved passion. I feel the book is calling me again.


#4 I Too Had A Love Story by Ravinder Singh
Romance

Now, do not judge me for this. I read a lot of new age, commercial Indian literature (if we can call it that), and this book is by far the best I've come across in this genre. Ravin and Khushi, the protagonists of this novel, are the couple next door. The way their love progresses, their sweet murmuring, their first encounters, their brewing passion- everything in this book is painfully relatable. And when you (especially if you are like me) start identifying so much with the incidents and characters in the book, the climax has the potential for leaving you depressed for hours after. I, in fact, found myself wailing. The fact that it is believed to be the author's own story makes the read all the more emotional. Now, the sequel of this story has hit the market. Can Love Happen Twice? I got my copy today. Hell yes I am excited!

#5 Abhijnanashakuntalam by Kalidasa

Sanskrit Classic
Yes, it is an odd inclusion in this list, but for my UPSC preparations, I have gone through most of Sanskrit dramas, prose and poems. 'Erotic' (Shringaar) is the main element of most of the great Sanskrit works, and though I fell in love with a lot of love stories narrated by the likes of Magha, Bana, Bharavi and others, Abhijnanashakuntalam clearly stood out as the most amazing. It is a simple tale of love between King Dushyant and an ashramkanya, Shakuntala. On a hunting expedition, Dushyanta stumbles upon Shakuntala, falls in love, and their love in consummated in a simple Gandharva wedding. Crisis strikes when Dushyanta returns to his Capital City and forgets Shakuntala and their love under the influence of a curse from Rishi Durvasa. Kalidasa weaves a string of some exquisite verses detailing how the two lovers overcome the hurdles created  by Providence's chicanery. Trivia- India, Bharat, is said to have derived its name from Shakuntala and Dushyanta's son- Bharata.

I am all pepped up and reading a lot many books these days. Though I am in a mood for experimenting with different genres at present, I shall return to the trusted romances soon. Just as an concluding thought, I never find a story complete till it does not have an adequate doze of romance in it. A love story, may be as a secondary narrative always does its bit in keeping me hooked onto a novel, no matter which genre it belongs to. Hopefully, I will come up with another list of my favorites, really soon. Till then, keep reading!

No. I am not at all attempting to shed my image as a cheesy, hopeless romantic. Nor am I trying to opulently put on display some new found sagacity in matters of the heart, arrived at by some personal bitter experience. I am only amused at something I read. And in the present context of everything happening around me, I find it worth recording on my blog.

What is happening in my life is irrelevant. But largely, suffice to say that love-lorn hearts (including my own) are strewn around me; most with an ache- the others brimming with (transitory) bliss. In this transitional phase in life, transitioning towards maturity, we, inter alia, grow from being a student to a professional, from being carefree to being responsible, from being a dependent to an independent...and alongside, with a presumptuousness we form philosophical perspectives on various aspects of life. One of these perspectives, inevitably, is about love. The grandiloquence of it, or the mere futility of it.

Though my beliefs ascribe to the former category, there was a King in erstwhile times, approximately around the seventh century A.D., who immortalized himself in a single line, perspicuously displaying his disapproval of any heart that ever loved- "Dhik tam cha, taam cha, madanam cha, imaam cha, maam cha." In particular, he displays his disapprobation toward those who are attracted towards others, disregarding and being unfaithful towards their own beloved ones. Story says that Bhartihari, a distinguished scholar and poet, besides being a King, composed a verse after discovering the infidelity of his wife, which approximates in English as-

"She, of whom I think ceaselessly, is indifferent to me, 

She yearns after another man, who himself is attached to a third one,

While some other woman pines away for me,

Fie on that woman, on him, on the God of love, on my wife, and myself!"

(यां चिन्तया सततं मयि सा विरक्ता
साप्यनमिच्छति जनं स जनोन्यसक्तः
अस्मत्कृते च परितुष्यन्ति काचिदन्या
धिक् तां च तं च मदनं च इमां च मां च )

 What the poet alludes to in the above verse is a time tested consternation; I call it time tested because what the poet experienced in his mature years, a lot of my friends are experiencing in their yet young times. The extrapolation of the above line approximates to the poet's feeling that true love in this world in rare. Man tries to locate his happiness in that of his loved ones, and when he discovers them to be unfaithful, he turns wholly averse to the very concept of love. Sounds familiar? It does to me! When people question me (and sometimes when I question myself) about the idealistic nature which we attribute to a feeling as subjective and formless as love, at times I have no answer but just a smile which seeks to convey an incorrigible belief in the truth of this feeling. Sometimes that smile is to check within myself if the belief/faith is still there. May be according to the poet above, true love can exist only if it satisfies a condition of double coincidence of desires; which are not as rare in the present world as would be in a barter economy. May  be I hold consonance with this thought. But may be I don't.

I only seek to shy away questions of how and why which tirelessly attempt to generalize the wonder that love is. Unfortunate is the fact is that that people start generalizing the notions of love only after they think they've been scathed by it. So, a lot of times, they don't generalize, but demonize it- curse whom they once loved, curse the feeling itself. I know things get harsh and hard sometimes, but they are always meant to. This one thought should never be lost sight of. There stands no example of an enduring tale of love which has not been tested amid the worst of circumstances. It stand tall if it survived the test, and it crumbled if it could not. The fact also is that it crumbles only to give way to something more worthy in its place. 

This might sound like an overtly optimistic thinking; but I do not know a better way of living. I, from whatever I have learnt in life, will always avoid generalizing love. I usually believe in love stories which propagate the love is forever doctrine, in the most convincing way; but have also caught myself sometimes philosophizing about it having an organic character - something that lives, breathes and has a life span. The eternity is then justified as something sublime, which ends with the people in love, but ends for sure. Love sometimes is a strength, the other times the biggest weakness of a person. A firm believer in love is only once in a lifetime dogma, I have often urged, and encouraged people to move on; and have even witnessed perfectly successful love stories emanate out of the second or even the third tryst of love for some people. Holding on and letting go are both contradicting essentials for knowing and experiencing love. There is a lot which is ideal about love, nothing that can be idealized about it. Our best bet is to live it while it lasts. To hold on till we can. To be happy, and spread the smiles. Thereafter, if ill omens do manifest, faith will lead you on. And if it does not, you should know that you have to let go. Love is a feeling to make your life beautiful and worth living; not to turn it into a grotesque painting with all the wrong colors at all the wrong places. And if the latter is what you feel has happened with you, did you not know that the artist capable of redrawing the painting resides very much within you?

PS- If you read through till here, and you liked even a little of what you read, and you are a person in love, and you are slow-and-not-so-expressive, take this at the perfect opportunity of letting someone know, in may be a little sentence that he/she is special to you. Trust me, it might mean the world to someone. Even if it is just a friend, sometimes you simply need let people know.

उपमा कालीदासस्य भरवेः अर्थगौरवं

दण्डिनः पदलालित्यं माघे सन्ति त्रयो गुणाः 

From this Shloka (श्लोक) begins my much looked forward to journey in the resplendent world of Samskrit Literature. Aah! Pleasures galore.

Not since today, but since forever, I have wanted to more than take a peek into the stories- historical and mythical- written by the preeminent scholars of the most ancient among all languages spread over the SaptaSindhu- more commonly recognizable as the Aaryan India- संस्कृत. I did, to some extent, quench this desire by reading quite majestic English translations of the most common Samskrit epics- The Ramayana and the Mahabharata (and the Bhagavad Gita), along with the not so great translations of other exquisite pieces of Samskrit literature; but now, and for the past weeks, I am reading pieces of literary genius, in the language of the vidvaans themselves. And it is proving to be nothing short of an experience lending ecstasy at every bend and corner I encounter in this journey through the greatest of Samskrit works.

The above Shloka has been composed by an anonymous scholar, who, adhering to the most basic of poetic meters, has stated in succinct precision the most renowned of literary traits of four Samskrit poets of unparalleled accomplishments- कालीदास, भारवि, दण्डी, and माघ.

Kaalidasa- Upama Kaalidasasya

Hailed as the 'Kavikulguru', the above shloka points out to the mastery of Kaalidasa at weaving the most beautiful similes in his poems. His similes, the genius at comparing and contrasting and drawing parallels, lends a perspicacity to his poems, which makes the thoughts of the poet effortlessly enter the mind of his readers. Raghuvamsa and Kumarsambhavam are two easy testimonies to his glorious similes.

Bharavi- Bhaarave Arthgauravam

Bharavi has been accredited with writing few of the most poetically  beautifully verses, which are rich in both- beauty of language, and beauty of meaning. The above shloka specifically points out to the arthagaurav- his ability to express a plethora of meanings in the least possible words; in other words- the depth of words. While sifting through his Kiratarjuniyam, some of his verses virtually left me stunned, but this shall be the topic of one of my later writings.

Dandi- Dandinah Padlaalityam

I have not yet read any of Dandi's works so commenting this line would be difficult- but padlaalityam in basic terms implies the beauty as represented in the arrangement of words in his prose. Of his most famous creations in Dashkumarcharitam, which I happen to be reading at present.

Maagh- Maaghe santi trayo gunah

As remarked by certain scholars, Maagh was perhaps the most accomplished of all kavis, as far as the beauty of his compositions if concerned. This is concurred by the anonymous composer of the shloka under discussion, who grants the climax of his shloka to Maagh, stating that the Great kavi Maagh has all three of the discussed qualities- upama, arthgauravam, and padlaalityam.

Not much is available about these poets on the internet, but I guess it is a blessing in disguise for a seeker of literary treasures, like me. I was driven towards more authentic sources to aid my learning, and in my quest, I am being guided by the ablest of mentors available- my mother- one of the best Samskrit teachers in Delhi. Her zeal to teach makes me want to learn faster.

PS- The last piece of gyaan bestowed on me today is whether they write prose or poetry, the writers in Samskrit are addressed as 'Kavi'- गद्यकवि (Gadyakavi)  and पद्कवि (Padkavi)

Is it strange that I have not been perturbed by any sort of intrigue about the much hyped, recently released Aishwarya and Abhishek starrer RAAVAN? Well, at least my cousin thinks so as he gives me those incredulous looks when I tell him I don’t care about the ‘hot new looks’ of the stars or the scenic locations or the great direction of Mani Ratnam which has surely made this movie a masterpiece. Frankly, I am glad the film has bombed at the box office (1 and ½ star rating by HT), a befitting answer to all those die heard Abhishek fans, eagerly awaiting the release of the epic film, hailed as a ‘landmark’ in his career. It may still turn out to be just that, but for me, the hullabaloo surrounding it has been consistently incomprehensible.

What I am glad for, though, is the fact that due to this movie, the media and the intellectuals have been compelled to undertake a debate on the conceptualization of ‘villain’ in our society, in our films, for once trying to give their characters their due respect. This is most aptly stated in the following lines- “Every story needs a villain. The Jain Chronicles are very clear about this. For every Vasudeva, they say, there must be a Prati-Vasudeva. Against Rama stands Ravana, against Krishna stands Kansa. In fact, the villain comes first, justifying the existence of the hero. The villain’s villainy props up the hero’s heroism, justifies the adoration and worship.” (-Devdutt Patnaik, mythologist, and author of The Pregnant King)

A particular source of fascination for me has been the obsession of print and electronic media with revisiting the much celebrate, legendary villain-Ravana- straight out of the epic Ramayana, composed by Valimiki. He is the iconic villain- one whom we love to hate!

Having my mother as a Sanskrit teacher has its own advantages. I dunno how small was I when my innocent tongue started chanting these lines-

“Damadamadamadamanninadavadamarvayam
Chakaarchandtaandavam tanotuna shivashivam”

I never understood their meaning - I still don’t. I was merely overtaken by the rhythm and vigor that emanated while chanting the initial part of these lines. What I do know today is the fact that these lines constitute the second part of the first verse of the 16 verse long Shiva Tandava Stotram, composed by the Asura king Ravana himself. When the fact that Ravana was a staunch devotee of Shiva, so much so that he composed this Stotram to appease the Lord from his petrifying anger, was first revealed to me, I stood in disbelief. Ravana was the sinister demon king who abducted Sita leading to his own destruction at the hands of Rama- how could someone like him be then related to a figure of a deeply religious and learned king, I failed to fathom.

“Ravana is a symbol of evil”- has it not been fed into our system since the time we were toddlers, and were still learning to identify figures, and used to sing alphabets along with other nursery rhymes? We couldn’t boast of any worldly wisdom at that time when our grandmother taught us that evil always gets defeated at the hands of good, as is the case of Ravana, during one of her bedtime story sessions. Such are the common, conventional and delusional wisdoms imparted to us through the oral transmissions of our mythologically rich heritage. Did anyone tell us that the immoral son of sage Vishravas and Kaikesi was actually a learned Brahmin and a great scholar of his time? Did anyone bother to tell us that he is ascribed as the author of Ravansamhita, the most powerful treatise on astrological investigations derived from our Vedic texts? Did anyone tell us that there exist communities in unknown interiors of our country, for whom, Ravana is the only deity they’ve ever worshipped? Did anyone tell us that there is a Jain temple dedicated to the mighty king Ravana near Alwar? Perhaps no one told us because they themselves are not aware. I myself was not, till I saw and was captivated by a documentary on NDTV India this weekend, my eyes glued to the TV screen as I stared at an idol of “lord” Ravana- perhaps for the first time witnessing a serene, and ‘vinamra’ expression on his face, as against the ‘raudra’ image as is commonly perceived in our society.

So today, Ravana stands for me not as the widely professed super-villain, but as an ambivalent figure- part daitya and part Brahmin. His ten heads would not so much frighten me as they did when I was a kid, for today I know his ten heads are symbolic of profound knowledge of four Vedas, and six Upanishads. I will recall him to mind as the composer of the hypnotic Shiva Tandava Stotram, whose hubris was karmically fated to be subdued by Rama. The next time I see Ravana go up in flames on Dussehra, the biggest celebration of triumph of good over evil as witnessed in India, I will for once bow my head humbly to the great and glorious demon king, who has ‘clearly fallen victim to the distinction drawn in Ramayana by Valmiki between a good human guided by moral ethics and marital bonding, and the Rakshasa Jati- the race of demons and illusionists who practice profligate living.’ (HT, 20/06/10).

While I do read in my Indian Culture readings about Samudragupta, the scion of illustrious Gupta dynasty, famously called the ‘Indian Napolean’ by V.A. Smith, as being a prolific veena-vaadak, it has been little in my cognizance, as of most around me that Ravana himself was an unparalleled player of the Veena- the instrument most profoundly associated with the image of the goddess of learning, Saraswati, herself.

The next time I go through the much simpler and abridged version of my copy of C. Rajagopalachari’s Ramayana, I will be in a position to give much more thought to the fact that Ravana is not simply a figure who should be used as an instrument to establish the good and astute image of maryadapushottam Rama year and year again in our highly saffronized society as his effigy goes up in flames during Dussehra; he is a legend in himself, capable of imparting much wisdom to all of us. As I rue the way the good and the evil forces were balanced inside Ravana, I remember the following quote I read in HT’s Saturday Editorial, written by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former Governor, West Bengal- “While I too believe in Gods, I don’t believe that God concerns himself with the fates and actions of individual human beings- in their daily chores, in their pettinesses and quarrels, in their moments of joy and sorrow… As a Zoroastrian, I believe that good an evil exist as separate forces and that the world we live in is a battlefield.” – Fali Nariman

With Ramayana having already attained its much exaggerated place amongst us, I am eagerly waiting to grab my copy of the ‘Ravanayana’. ‘Ravana’ definitely is the flavor of the season!