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To many it was more than just a book. I’m beginning to believe almost every young girl has sneaked in a Mills & Boon into her text book and read right through a boring lecture in college. So many I spoke to had their own story to tell of their association with this little piece of romantic fiction, or stories of friends and relatives who were M&B freaks. It was considered a marker of ‘coming of age’ if you carried one in your hand or were found reading it. Many discard them with their teenage phase, with rose-tinted views of romance. Manyothers, stick on.

Proof: Mills & Boon turns 100 this year. And in the centenary year, it will be launched in India with Harlequin Mills & Boon (India) all set to print and distribute the books locally for Rs. 99. For the past six decades Mills & Boon U.K. had been exporting books to India. And they have even hinted that there may be Indian authors and Indian characters too! Over the years the book has changed, the categories of romance have grown, they have gotten more explicit, and gone beyond the “doormat-meets-matador” formula. (In fact The Guardian, in a 2002 article observed that M&B has gone all outright raunchy.)

Rekha Kowshik, a 38-year-old literature professor, who read M&Bs from when she was in class nine till she completed her M.A, says: “It kindles one’s romantic fantasies. There’s some charm in reading about far-away romances in Cairo and Italy and opens up the world of tall-dark-handsome men. Earlier writers had a flair for writing and it was not gross. It didn’t call for any deep analysis either.”

Charlotte Lamb and Penny Jordan were her favourite authors and she didn’t really fancy the doctor-nurse romances. She recalls finishing an average of two M&Bs a day at some point in time. “Sometimes, I read in class, although I would hate it if my students did it now…,” she laughs, buts adds in all earnestness: “But I would also understand. Students today, however, rarely take to reading. They don’t even want to read Archie comics!”

Rekha remembers how her father disapproved of the book (making her scurry with a torch under the blanket to read), how one orthodox classmate would refuse to touch the book, while yet another would look down upon her and suggest she read serious authors like Milan Kundera instead!

“But give me a rainy day, a cup of coffee and an M&B, and I would love to do it all over again,” she sighs.

Sandhya A., a software engineer got hooked to M&Bs when she was 10, when she read her first at a cousin’s place. Relatives went and complained to her mother! At 36, she continues to read them, though: “Now I can’t read the whole book. Those days it was sanitised and stopped at kissing. Now, it’s more bent on the physical aspect. It’s become boring and unrealistic.”

Sandhya has about 30 of them still in her own collection. But most of them she borrowed from the public library or bought-and-sold them at second-hand book stores. She also believes that the book and its characters have changed with the times.

How many has she read? “Thousands!! From the age of 14 to 19, I have read three a day!” When she moved on to work, the number whittled down to one. Lakshmi Chandrashekar, a 47-year-old homemaker remembers how the circulating library was the end of her walking point and she would pick up her dose of M&B. The decline of the neighbourhood circulating library has meant the decline of M&Bs too, she believes.

From reading one book a day she had to bring down the reading when time became a limitation. “You knew they would have happy endings. You’d guess the ending in the very beginning, yet you get addicted,” she says.

A voracious reader of fiction, she considered this more of light reading, something you can skip and read and still miss nothing. She remembers Diana Palmer being a favourite author.

“I guess even now I can pick one and read it…”

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