Indian affairs

From now on,Indian fans of Mills & Boons won’t have to make do with descriptions of the stormy love affairs of Greek Tycoons and Spanish flamenco dancers. The men-with-dark-inscrutable-eyes and the women-with-fiery-but-dreamy-eyes get a more Indian tone,thanks to the very first Indian M&B launched recently — The Love Asana by Milan Vohra. The author won the Passions-Aspiring Author Auditions,conducted by the publishing house,Harlequin Mills & Boon Indian Private Limited last year. Now,she has produced a book that though rooted in India,will have international appeal,she says.

“The idea for the book came to me during a yoga lesson and I wondered,why not have a romance set in a yoga studio. After all,it may be Indian in origin,but it’s practised all over the world,” she explains. Briefly put,the novel tracks the lovelife of NRI Vivan Parasher and yoga instructor Pari. Vivan traps the sweet,innocent Pari in marriage,as part of his vengeance against her brother,who betrayed Vivan’s sister and led to her suicide. Pari,much against her will,falls in love with Vivan and Vivan finds himself returning her attentions.

“Like most girls in India,I started reading M&B books when I was in my teens,” says the 46-year-old author,“Of course,I moved on to other kinds of books eventually,but these books continued to be ‘comfort reading’ for me.” Vohra,who was an advertising executive before she turned to writing fulltime,came across a poster announcing the Passions contest last year at a book store. “Then a few friends told me about it and said it would be a great platform. I finally got down to writing it a day before the deadline expired. The word limit was 2,000,but in my enthusiasm,I wrote double that,” she says. It was her first attempt at writing romance,but clearly she had a talent for the kind of prose that the publishers required,as she won the contest and landed a contract to write India’s very first M&B. Contrary to what might be expected,Vohra had no trouble producing the erotic passages that most M&B readers love. “It came surprisingly easily,” she laughs.