The other day my husband and I went for dinner to our neighbour's place. Their teenaged daughter was in her room when we reached there.

"Come out, Ritu!" her dad shouted.

No response.

The embarrassed parents explained to us that she was reading one of her favourite Harlequin romance novels; and while in that act, she becomes deaf to the world.

After repeated calls, Ritu came out. Her parents were hugely relieved.

"I don't want you to think she is rude, you know," her mother said in an undertone. "It's just that at her age their interests are so different!"

I smiled in agreement. But my husband didn't. When we got home, he said it was not polite of Ritu to stay in her room when guests had come over.

"She's not a little kid, you know," he said.

I told him that while it was definitely not nice, it was not uncommon for a girl in her teens. In fact, during my time I too was like that, I said.

My husband couldn't understand how, or why. So I tried to tell him about the highly addictive nature of romance novels.

Actually, I'm doing poor Ritu an injustice when I say I was 'like' her. I was worse. People who knew me then will vouch for it. Some called me impolite, while some others used stronger words like 'rude', 'arrogant' and outright 'hostile'!

During my teens, you see, I used to thrive on Mills & Boon novels. "They are my daily fuel," I used to joke.

There was a library just 10 minutes from where we lived. It made things easier for me. I religiously visited it on weekdays and weekends.

I not only read the novels, but lived the heroine's part. Thus, towards the end of each novel, I dutifully shed some tears when the hero and heroine were breaking up. Of course, they always got together a little later.

Once I finished a novel, I was hungry for another. So I chain-read them.

My idea of Prince Charming was someone straight out of an M&B -- 'Tall, Dark and Handsome'.

"It's nothing but the effect of those novels you read," my friends would say when I described my prince.

Of course, my parents were fed up with me during those years. What my husband and I witnessed with Ritu used to happen with me on a regular basis.

There were endless occasions when my dad or mom knocked on the door to ask me to come and watch television with them, or to greet visitors, or for something else. But budge I would not, till I finished my novel.

I don't know how I got out of that crazy phase in my life. But it happened, though very gradually. And that's what I want to tell the parents of all the Ritus around the world.

Let her be. She will cure as certain as M&B heroes are T, D and H.

Uma Katipally is currently trying to feed her husband an M&B.

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