Intoxicating Books!

By:- Tanya Princess *

Tall dark and handsome, knight in the shining armour are some phrases I have grown up contemplating my perfect boyfriend. Judith Mcnaught and Jude Deveraux made my teenage years yearn for that perfect 'man'.

Till now I live in the illusion of finding my "knight in the shining armour" waiting to sweep me up in his arms and take me away in his black stallion.

My boarding school friends and I always longed for those times when we would visit the library and smell those hard bound books with the author's name inscribed as Judith Mcnaught or Jude Deveraux.

After every read we would tell each other the witty and flirtatious lines of the characters and gossip the whole day about it. Finally we would ask each other why Hollywood never made movies on her books and get sad over it. I realized now that it was best if we only read about it.

Imagine an XYZ actor playing my favourite hero, the love of my life. I would rather murder the makers. It was our constant source of pleasure in our hectic lives we led as boarders and helped us cope with the home-sickness.

Long after I left the school, memories of those rainy Sundays and other short vacations flashed in my mind when we used to talk about our crushes, here the heroes from our novels.

Sometimes we even used to fight a tug of war of our favorite heroes. Those were the days when we didn't understand what love meant and were content with our heroes and the fantasies Judith spun. The best part is reading habit got developed in us.

Now whenever I get bored with books by other authors I could always fall back to my good old Judith books that I buy whenever my pockets allow me to.

As I have grown older, completing graduation is old enough to realize that my favorite heroes would never come to life for me. Yet those treasured moments in the school library, sniffing the books transporting each one of us in the era that the author conjured in her books gives me a haunting nostalgia.

The smell of those books was enchantingly sublime. It gave me high without any intoxicants and left me awake till I reached the very last page one I start it!

Yet its time I move on and get real and stop living in fantasy but something forbids me!!

PS: My group of friends who enjoyed and were hardcore Judith fans are all single till date.