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Those were the days

V Gangadhar

Over the years, Valentine's day has become a big event in India. This shows that we are moving along with the civilised world. Newspapers earn millions of rupees carrying special personal ads on this day while restaurants, hotels and gift shops do good business. Love or no love, Valentine's Day is a bonanza for commercial set-ups.

Are Indians, these days, more romantic than before? Are we back in the days of chivalry?

These thoughts crossed my mind as the local bus I was travelling in halted in front of a building that bore the name Ivanhoe. What a name for a building! Romantic, tinged with a sense of history.

Boys of our generation while growing up loved to read Sir Walter Scott, a much under-rated novelist. I did not agree with that assessment on Scott, "Scott is for boys, Thackeray for men and Shakespeare for the gods." In a way, of course, it was a compliment for Scott. After all, boys had more colourful and vivid imagination than grown-ups, and if they enjoyed reading Scott, it spoke highly of his creativity.

I know Scott is not read much these days. That is a pity. Every young boy should read Ivanhoe and, if possible, Quentin Durward, Talismanand Rob Roy. Disowned by his father, the good knight Ivanhoe, who firmly supported Richard the Lionheart, then in exile, was prepared to challenge evil King John who had usurped his brother's throne. The book portrayed the struggle between the Normans and the Saxons as well as the plight of the Jews.

Ivanhoe set my mind on fire. The tournaments which featured the bravest of the knights jousting, and the bravery of young Ivanhoe who brought down one knight after another, much to the annoyance of King John...

Romance was provided by Lady Rowena. But my favourite was the black-eyed Jewish beauty, Rebecca, who fell hopelessly in love with Ivanhoe, knowing fully well that she was pursuing an impossible dream. It was Rebecca who treated Ivanhoe after he was badly wounded in the tournament and dreamt of being with him for the rest of her life.

Scott's style of writing was not very elegant. But he was at his best in describing battle scenes. His romantic scenes were rather contrived and missed any spark. Oh, how formal the ladies and gentlemen of those period were! It was an era of hand-kissing, of spreading your cloak on the mud so that the lovely ladies could walk over them and avoid the dirt! That was what Sir, Water Raleigh famously did for Queen Elizabath I. Yet that chivalrous gesture did not help him when he was imprisoned at the Tower of London and, finally, beheaded.

The historical romances lacked the frenzy of today's Valentine's Day. Yet, there was an old worldly charm about them. The feelings were implied rather than expressed. The knight errant always made it clear that he was much inferior to the lady he was courting and asked if she would condescend to favour him with her love?

It was certainly a man's world in those days, but as for as budding romances went, the man was prepared to bow down before his beloved, write poems for her and declare that he was unfit to kiss the hem of her skirt.

Wooing was a long and wordy process, but it had its own charm.

The scenes and situation were the same in Scott's other novels, particularly Quentin Durward and Talisman . The first had a French background, while much of the action in Talisman took place in the Middle East at the time of Crusades. Quentin Durward was a young Scot, similar to Ivanhoe, falling in love with a princess who was much above him in life. There was something touching in these romances.

England and France might have been in the throes of the Hundred Years War but I was more interested in how Quentin Durward pursued his lady love and finally won her. Today's snappy Valentine Day messages were no match or the depiction of romance in Scott's novels.

Many of these novels were also made into movies. Ivanhoe starred the superstars of the 1950's Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor, who played Rebecca and who completely outshone Lady Rowena, played by Joan Fontaine.

As the film progressed, I thought that Ivanhoe was dumb to have preferred Rowena to the dazzling Rebecca. That was the kind of impact the violet-eyed Elizabeth Taylor had on the young men of my generation.

Quentin Durward, I think, also starred Robert Taylor, who was normally rather wooden in his roles. This film was no exception.

When I was growing up, I did not know anything about Valentine's Day. But I read an account of it in the immortal Pickwick Papers where the irrepressible Sam Weller sent a Valentine's Day message to his sweetheart, the maid Mary, and signed it, 'From your lovesick Pickwick'. It was the custom in those days not to sign the message with your own name! My fascination for historical romances continued.

Tamil fiction favoured historical romances and there was a good market for them. Popular magazines like Kalki, Anandavikatna and Kumudauam serialised highly popular historical novels. The Late R Krishnamurty who wrote under the name of Kalki was as good as Scott and I vividly recall marvellous passages from his historical romances, Sivakamiyin Sabadam (The Oath of Sivakami) and Partipan Kanavu ( The dream of Partipan). Both novels had their plots centred in the Pallava-Chalukya era and featured some wonderful characterisation. Sadly, the kind Mammala Pallavan, who was very much in love with the dancer, Sivakami, could not marry her in the end and I recall the copious tears shed by the readers.

The BEST bus left Ivanhoe building far behind. But I was still daydreaming. Valentine Day came just once a year, but the historical romances were always available to add romance to life. When I reached home, I could not locate my copy of Ivanhoe.

Instead I glanced through the pages of The Prisoner of Zenda and the sad love affair between the unfortunate Rudolf Rassyndel and the charming Princess Flavia of the Kingdom of Zenda. Ah, that was another historical romance which enriched my boyhood...

Illustration: Dominic Xavier