Indian Love Stories

Of the many enduring fascinations of the love story, a vehicle for the vicarious satisfaction of our hidden desires and obscure longings, is the pleasure we take in its subversion of the conventions that govern the relationship between the sexes. At least, this is true of tales about young lovers who are believed to express the purest of romantic sentiments. In some of the classical love stories of the world-Romeo and Juliet, Layla and Majnun-the lovers express wishes which are utterly at odds with the accepted ideology of their time on the man-woman relationship.