Literary Crushes

Got this idea from Stochastica. Who are your literary crushes? The character that epitomised all that you expected from a soul mate (there, I said that word), the character that seemed to be made just for you (never mind that the book had sold million copies, so million people thought that the character was made just for them).

The crushes change as you grow up. Some of the previous crushes now look positively stupid. Some of them still maintain their halo. Here goes my list (I have split it into English and Tamil)

English:
Ayn Rand's Heroines - Dagny Taggart and Dominique Francon captured my fancy for some time, but it was Kira of We The Living who took hold of me. The strength that she displayed was something that attracted me, possibly also because I think We The Living is a better novel than the other two.

Jennifer Cavilleri - "Love means never having to say you're sorry"(Yeah I believed it once). Nothing much to say except that because of her I know the book line by line (thankfully it is a small book)

Leslie Parrish- I did mention the word soulmate in the opening para, didn't I?

Malory Tower Girls - For some one whom school meant an ugly block of building in small non-descript towns, Enid Blyton's books were like a view of heaven. Crazy thing is I read Sydney Sheldon novels before I started reading Enid Blyton.


Tamil:
Yamuna of Mogamul - Yamuna is my all time top crush. In this I am not alone, this character from Thi. Janakiraman's Mogamul novel has captivated almost all readers of serious Tamil literature. There have been people who have gone to Kumbakonam just to see the street where the character's house is located.

Sindhu of Sindhu Bhairavi - I know, this is a character from a movie, so what. Sindhu's quick wit and head strongness were just too good. Only later in life did I read about the feminist angle of the character and the chauvinism of the director. But when I saw the movie all that didn't matter. Balachander's attempt at recreating this character in his later movie Kalki didn't work out though.

Suseela - Yes, that famous (!) Bharath Suseela from Pattukkottai Prabahakar's pocket novels(?). There was a time when I was crazy about those pocket novels, which were basically retelling the same story again and again in various locales. Rajeshkumar (Vivek / Roopala), Subha (Naren / Vaijayanthi) novels too were part of this, but Suseela was special, possibly because she was the only one who used to wear T Shirts with captions(remember again, small town boy in late 80s).