My relationship with romance

Thappad se dar nahi lagta sahaab, pyaar se dar lagta hai..

Ever since I can remember, I have been nervous...

no....afraid... 

actually terrified...

...of romantic love...

For what seemed like the longest time, I waited for my knight to rescue me from the ordeals I was facing.

But as Murphy's law works, no one came. And so I decided to immerse myself in the more plausible pursuits like reading.

My mother's office had a humongous library with all sorts of books. An avid reader, as I am, would always go for thrillers, mysteries and crime novels. I would not only make my mother return books that were remotely mushy but would also openly trash books in the romantic genre and its readers.

Who reads such mushy, unreal stuff?, I would wonder...such trash...

As a part of my bucket list, I had to read a genre that I had never read before; there were only 3 - finance, history and romance. 

After months of trying to read finance and history books and failing, I resigned to pick up a book from the "romance shelf".

At 39, I picked up my first romantic novel, written by Julia Quinn. My goal was to get done with it in one go, lest I allow resistance to kick in.

As I read through a first few chapters, I sensed glimpses of yearning within me. As chapters went by, I sobbed blobs of tears into my pillow while reading about how the heroine was loved for just who she was. 

After years, I felt the excitement of being wooed, butterflies in my tummy, warmth of platonic love, anticipation of meeting your loved one, the beautiful, sweet pain in missing someone, the pain of a heartbreak and then the glory of the 'happily ever after'.

With my strong prejudice against reading romantic books, I finally realized what I had been missing for all these years - hope!