Desi love stories: Harlequin Mills & Boon’s Indian enterprise

This article examines the way the latest Mills & Boon novels written by Indian authors exoticize and eroticize India for the native as well as the foreign audience. It will explore whether their romances, with the exception of Indian protagonists and the setting, are different from those published in the West. The article analyses how the authors have refashioned the present romance formula and enriched it with something particularly Indian. It will focus on how the use of Indian language together with English, wedding rituals, less explicit descriptions of sex, and a representation of Indian tradition and culture, hybridize the western romance genre.