New Delhi, June 14 -- Bored of reading about sewing, pianoforte sessions and perambulation, a friend and I tried rewriting Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma to fit into our high school-setting in Chennai about three decades ago. 'Fan fiction' wasn't a term we knew, Clueless was a hit but hadn't yet reached our corner of the world, and so, in our ignorance, we felt quite bold, creative and original. We weren't really fans, but the Bennet sisters held promise, we decreed. They were more interesting and independent-minded than the four Little Women and not as preachy as Thomas Hardy's characters-also in the syllabus-but they still seemed rather old, prim and hemmed-in for 15-year-olds who borrowed adventure stories from the library ...