The ‘Mint Lounge’ love list

u Professor Higgins and Eliza in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’:

Shaw strips love of the trade it tends to become and establishes the dignity of what a woman can be in a relationship.

u Lemony Snicket and Beatrice Baudelaire in Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’:

The whimsical, twisted ways that Lemony declares his undying love for (the much dead) Beatrice in each of his missives to her.

u Florentino and Fermina in ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’:

The classic eternal love story that can wait, and that stays despite wrinkles.

u Draupadi and Arjun in the Mahabharat:

The instant and fiery chemistry, doomed togetherness, spiked by passion, anger and intimate betrayal for loyalty to a larger cause.

u Toru and Naoko and Midori in Haruki Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’:

It has a haunting, lyrical quality, although told with a surface simplicity. In this love story, even the most mundane everyday things glow with symbolic possibilities.

u All Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks pairings:

They’re a funny, real, spirited couple, always trying to outdo each other. No real sacrifice or conflict involved, just plain, earnest love. They are an escape.

u Michael and Julia in Vikram Seth’s ‘An Equal Music’:

It began with music and continued when there was none, when Julia turns deaf.

u Shakuntala and Dushyant:

For sheer proof of the fact that true love can conquer anything—even the curse of forgetfulness.

u Mr Chow and Mrs Chan in Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In The Mood for Love’ (2000):

Wong Kar Wai proves that you can make an entire movie based on nothing more than the sensation of your heart melting bit by bit.

u Elizabeth and Darcy in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride And Prejudice’:

Romance between two equal people, and therefore fun all the way. Yet so yin and yang. They can love and hurt each other in equal measure.

u Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy in the first volume of Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’:

Their romance was born out of a need to possess (in the case of Swann) and a need for material progress (in the case of Odette), yet their love was real and full of complicated emotions.

u Rochester and Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’:

So dark, so plain, so hot.

u Catherine and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’:

This love was never meant to be. Wait! Was it even love from both sides?

u ‘Calvin and Hobbes’:

They accept unconditionally every wild thought or idea and understand each other without having to spell it out.