LOOKING FOR REALITY IN ROMANCE The people around the princess too wake up. This is no ordinary prince. He is the Prince Charming who has attracted not only the princess but her whole world. The awakening refers also to her sexual arousal, as she instantly grows up, falls in love, marries the charmer and lives happily ever after. Prince Charming is synonymous with Mr. Right. This happens both in 'Cinderella' and 'Snow-white'. Cinderella is forced into drudgery until the prince chooses her as his wife. Snow-white is compelled to a wretched existence and almost dies. The prince brings her back to a happy enjoyable life. The present is seen as delightful but the promise of a blissful future is much more important. 'And they lived happily ever after'. Their trouble-free beautiful future together is assured. The most frequent motif of Paradise Lost and Regained, as seen in the story of Cinderella, runs through most fairy tales in the form of initial misfortune leading eventually to a happy ending. Romances are built up to reach this 'happy ending' or the final moment where the man admits his love for the woman. The three magical words 'I Love You' establish the moment, the end of the narrative. The moment is created when a bridge is formed between T and 'You' with the word 'Love'. It is absolutely essential to reach this sentence through reading. It is to arrive at this certain eternal moment that women read romances. Reading a romance, then, is always a re-reading of the known tale in a new milieu. Titles like The forever spell' (Harlequin] and 'Bridge of love' (Silhouette) make us aware of this. Here no suspense is possible, yet there is strange tension for the decisive conclusion. The readers know that this does not happen in reality so there is a need to reassure, underline and emphasize the same thing. As if reiteration will produce the words as true. The sentence in itself is neither absurd nor impossible in reality. Only in the discourse of romance it carries more weight than it does actually. By the utterance of this phrase the man/hero/prince (whatever we call him) makes an immortal promise that whatever happens this statement stays constant and so long as it remains valid Paradise continues. The patriarchal norms can all be safely accepted once the magical 'I love You' has been introduced. The heroine is accepted as a prize/reward by the hero. So now the misfortunes, maltreatments, tortures (most often by the hero himself) can all be forgotten. The whole point is to look forward to a happy domesticated nuclear family. The kind of family we see daily through commercial advertisements of detergents, soaps and cosmetics. For example the current advertisement of Pantene shampoo in Doordarshan shows a woman