Meet Merry Farmer, she lives in suburban Philadelphia, but was obviously Indian in her last many births. She loves Bollywood & is working towards becoming an becoming an internationally certified cricket scorer (No, really!) Here she talks about how Bollywood has inspired her latest novel, Our Little Secrets.
Okay, what do Bollywood films and Medieval
Romance novels have in common? That was
the first question that popped to mind when Laxmi invited me to do a guest post
on her blog. On the one hand, I love
Bollywood. I’ve been watching Bollywood
films for years. I’ve also been studying
medieval history for years. Other than
the fact that I love them both, what ties these two fabulous things together?
My love of Bollywood comes straight out of
the larger-than-life feeling of the stories and romances it portrays. When a man and a woman fall in love in Hindi
they don’t just fall in love. They
sigh! They sing! They dance as though their hearts are
breaking! They do it with so much color
and emotion that you can’t help but be carried away with them. I sometimes feel as though westerners think
this is silly. But sometimes love is
silly. It’s also wonderful and all-consuming. We in the west might like to pretend that
we’re more sensible about these things, but how can you be sensible in the face
of emotions that make your heart burst with song?
In the Middle Ages people knew how to love
the way they do in Bollywood. The High
Middle Ages especially was a time of heroism, adventure, and above all,
love. The idea of Courtly Love, that a
brave and gallant knight could love a lady, sometimes from afar, sometimes from
very close indeed, ruled the day. The
great stories of the High Middle Ages were epic love stories. We still celebrate those stories today. The tragic love triangle between King Arthur,
Sir Lancelot, and Guinevere was one of the most fashionable and loved stories
of the time. The story of Tristan and
Isolde was just as celebrated.
The similarity between Bollywood and the
Middle Ages doesn’t end there though. In
Bollywood you find heroes who fight fiercely and love passionately. The same is true of the knights of the Middle
Ages who served their king or fought for what they believed in during the
crusades. I can’t help but think that
Veer in Veer-Zaara would be just as
much at home donning armor and fighting his way through the battlefields of
Europe to prove his love. In the same
way I could see Sir Lancelot drinking himself to death over the loss of his
love, just like Devdas. The same kind of
passion drove Medieval heroes as drives those in Bollywood.
I’ve tried to capture some of the essence
of what I love so much about Bollywood in my Noble Hearts trilogy. There’s more than a little bit of Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam in the first book
of the series, The Loyal Heart. I’d explain, but then I’d be spoiling the
story. The same themes of sacrifice for
a higher cause that I’ve seen in dozens of Bollywood movies are in The Faithful Heart. And The
Courageous Heart ends the trilogy with a story of redemption that any
Bollywood hero would be proud of.
So really, the line between Bollywood and
Medieval Romance is a thin one.. Both
show the world in bright colors and strong emotions. And both provide endless hours of entertainment
to those of us with sentimental hearts.
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| Merry Farmer |
Find her at
Get her books here:
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005R4K75W
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/dp/
B&N – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/
Our
Little Secrets
