HOLD on to your bodices - and your saris.

Mills & Boon (M&B), the biggest romance publisher in the world, has just completed its largest search for fresh literary talent.

And the winner comes from an unusual source - India.

The UK-based company held a writing competition in India to find its first author from the sub-continent, reported The Times.

The firm thought that the land that produced the Kama Sutra, Taj Mahal and countless Bollywood couplings could take its tales of perfect love to new heights.

And they were right - advertising executive Milan Vohra's tale about love conquering all in a yoga class swept the judges off their feet.

Her 2,000-word story, The Love Asana, was done in a single night.

Mrs Asana, 44, a 'foolish romantic', married at 24, and she and her husband have two children aged 18 and 11.

Under Mills & Boon's coaching, she is likely to become one of its global megastars.

That club comprises Nora Roberts, the American scribe known as the Master, whose books have sold 280 million copies.

Mrs Vohra's homeland has already been the setting for several Mills & Boon books by Western authors, like the recent Virgin for the Billionaire's Taking.

But the publisher, which sells four books every second, is now looking to nurture local talent to bridge cultural divides and boost sales further.

It set up its first office in India last year and now has China, Russia and Turkey in its sights.

It hopes to unearth novelists appealing to India's expanding middle class, and wants Indian-influenced plots in which 'young characters in hip, affluent settings meet, flirt, share experiences, have great sex and fall in love . . . for ever'.

Literacy rates are rising in India and an increase in disposable income in recent years, particularly among women, mean that more people are buying books rather than borrowing them from libraries or friends.

There have been concerns that the more explicit titles are too risque for a country where romantic intimacy can be taboo, and some of the stories were steamy indeed.

In what is probably a first for a Mills & Boon book, Ram Nagarajan, a chemical engineering professor, wrote of his heroine: 'Being a well-brought-up, traditional Indian girl, premarital sex never reared its hoary head, and all her suitors respected that.'

So did the judges - he won third place.

Not all the entrants were as coy.

Ms Samhita Ambast included in her story the line: 'Yes, although I have only met you for the third time, and enjoyed fleeting, mind-blowing sex, I will marry you.'

She came in second.

This article was first published in The New Paper.