Cupid's capers

Feel good is not a favoured feeling at the moment. Reading feel good love stories is juvenile; talking about them definitely declasse "" at least in adult circles that count. We'd rather intellectualise the sowing circles of Afghanistan. Dissect the happenings in Iraq.

As for "feeling"...now, that's a guilty word; reading Mills & Boon on the sly (what at your age?) and weeping over Shahrukh Khan dying on screen (excusable as a momentary indulgence).

Besides they've turned Romeo and Juliet into a comedy now. Bathos, instead of pathos, inducing, a parody of its real self. In the latest age of reason, feeling is a problem. Even where it really counts. But then what is some paltry, self-indulgent emotion compared to weighty matters of the world?

Which is why you would hardly ever find an anthology on love stories mentioned in a serious review column like this. Publishers may send one to press in the hope of a Valentine's Day boost in sales. Lunching ladies may pick up a copy when there's nothing better to do.

But a discussion and a review "" unlikely. The only reason then that The Rupa Book of Love Stories finds a place here perhaps is, Ruskin Bond. One of India's best known, best regarded authors, Bond obviously lends respectability to this collection both by suffixing his name to it and by the eclectic choices he makes.

But before we get to that, let this be noted, "Rusty", as his one-time love calls him in one of the stories, makes for a rather endearing Cupid.

You only have to look at the cover to agree with me: bow, arrow, wings, glasses in place, garbed in newborn babe finery "" which must refer to what can only be called a red nappy! In fact, I would go to the extent of deeming him "cute" but for fear of offending all the high brow readers of this space.

But don't judge the book by its cover. Not this one. There is nothing puerile about the anthology. The wide selection includes classics such as O Henry's "The Gift of The Magi", without which no anthology of love stories can ever be complete.

There's also the celebrated "Layla and Majnun", part of popular folklore but whose original and full version not many readers would have encountered before. (Did you, for instance, know that Qays is the original name of the hero, who came to be called Majnun, only later after falling, literally, madly in love; Majnun connoting "mad with love".)

The version recounted here is a prose one carved out from the original poem by one of the earliest known Persian romantic poets, Nizam-Uddin Abu Mohammed Ilyas bin Yusuf (1140-1202) as the editor's introductory note tells us. The last, at the beginning of each story, is an excellent idea, putting all the literature in context.

"Layla and Majnun" is one of the few tales in the anthology to have been written in a different language "" and form "" originally. Yet, the style is retained. The tale's poetic origins are evident in the elaborate similes, epithets and epic-style narrative: "Layla, Pearl of the Night" is reminiscent of "Rosy-fingered dawn" (Odyssey) and the like in Western classical literature.

The best love stories are tragic. The best lovers, young and dead. A fact that Bond himself notes: "Juliet with wrinkles and Romeo limping with arthritis would be fatal to their appeal." Bond has a point. Yet he has gone out of his way to hunt for happier endings.

"Happiness", a story by the French master of the short story Maupassant is an example. Better known for his gloomy fiction (he took his own life remember), "Happiness", is an exception, intensely nostalgic, but not tragic. However, despite Bond's considerable efforts at sourcing similar stuff, the best reads even here remain those with sad endings.

"The Love of the Prince of Glottenburg" by Anthony Hope, "Mary Ansell" by Martin Armstrong and "The Nightingale and The Rose" by Oscar Wilde would be my pick. Hope, better known for his novel The Prisoner of Zenda, filmed several times, shows his mastery over the genre of the historical romance while few tales of love and intense longing come close to Mary Ansell. Wilde's "The Nightingale and The Rose" is a more stylised piece, black, ironical, that still manages to evoke pathos and a deep sense of loss.

Women authors down the ages have not really favoured the short story. The George Eliots and Jane Austens, as Bond notes, needed a broader framework of the novel to tell their stories about people, lives and loves. One exception here is Mrs Belloc Lowndes.

Her story, "The Duenna", is a superbly crafted piece with the atmosphere of a typical Gothic novel. (You can see similar Gothic influences also in the works of many women novelists of the nineteenth century, say, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bronte).

Lowndes brings a touch of the supernatural to her tale about an extra-marital affair. And if the twist in the tale is essential to any successful short story, this one would definitely rate as one of the most thrilling in the collection.

So what about Bond, himself? The anthology also includes two stories by him. But while Bond, the editor makes some good choices, Bond, the writer, disappoints. Which is saying a lot.

Not for nothing is Ruskin Bond one of India's best loved authors. Few can match his simple yet engaging style. Here, the style is in place, the atmosphere too but the soul of a love story is missing. No, Mr Bond, we like the ghost tales better.

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THE RUPA BOOK OF LOVE STORIES

Edited By Ruskin Bond
Rupa & Co
Price:Rs 295,
Pages: 211