CHENNAI: For decades, Indians have been used to reading about the tumultuous affairs of business magnates with midnight blue eyes and bookshop owners with sun-streaked blond hair. Now, Chennai-based Pageturn Publishers’ debut desi romances, provide a charming alternative.
Two novels — Dewdrops at Dawn and Together 24x7, both by first-time authors — were launched earlier this month at book stores across the city. “For years, I have felt the need to read about the romantic lives of people in our country, but which were the equivalent of romantic novels set abroad – they needed to be fun, light and basically serve an escapist need,” said Sandhya Sreedhar, director of Pageturn Publishers’ who, along with partners Sunita Suresh and R Venkatesan, began the venture in 2009.
The slim, attractively-designed novels in pastel colours, priced at Rs 89 have been created for a mass market (and the recent massive success of the Twilight series goes to show just how big a market there is), said Sandhya, for women (and men too) of all generations.
While exotic locales such as the islands of Crete and the raunchy, fastpaced tumbles into lust may be missing, there is a welcome and reassuring familiarity in settings such as Coimbatore and Jaipur and the slower, meeting-of-eyes-across the canteen kind of affair. “The culture of dating in India is different to what it is abroad. We believe that readers will empathise more with these books, which are about the lives of people here. It’s not that the typical goodlooking hero and attractive heroine are not present.
It’s more that the stories are similar to what actually happens in our cities and towns,” she said.
When looking for writers, Pageturn found there were a number of authors of unpublished romance manuscripts — both female and male. Sandhya herself, is at “two and a half books”. The imprint of the first series is ‘Red: full blooded romance’, but Pageturn is also working on ‘Pink: tender romance, set amongst the lives of teenagers.
Move over rugged, lean-jawed Carlo/ Logan, here come Sundar/Jai with ‘honey-toned’ complexions and smouldering dark eyes.