Of Kisses and forbidden topics

I was recently going through some article on the webspace criticising the rising incidence of public affection in India and how this was against Indian culture and values.With the point being that though …. we are a liberal country, but not when our women kiss or are kissed in public. And my mind wavered off to many news items and photos that I have seen in DT where there are actual incidences of crowd trouble on seeing some foreigners kissing passionately oblivious to the hordes of onlookers and unapologetic about breaking the so called norms curbing the show of affection in public places.

Now this 'unashamed' show is one thing that you just cant ignore about the Western society,especially the French one as France and Spain are two countries most renowned for such sort of affection.Love it or hate it,but you cant miss it.Whenever a couple locks lips, and mind you the no. can be as high as 20-30 times during the course of a single lunch line,my emotions do a kind of somersault and shift from ecstacy to disgust and if the frequency is high, 'I dont care 'attitude.Though it does get irritating after a while especially in a group if everytime you talk,someone is busy trading kisses.After frequenting many bars and clubs in the first few months,I amused myself by predicting which couples or dancing strangers would graduate to kissing and in how much time.And I realized that I was quite good at this.Nothing amuses you as much as the success of your experiments.It can get very uncomfortable at the beginning with scenes like these seen moremostly just in cheap movies and even a fleeting lip-lock in a Hindi movie being such a source of gossip and interest for all.Once a German girl,who was very interested in Hindi movies asked me about the reason why Indian actors dont kiss in the movies.I tried to make my point through a small example by saying,"In my 20 years experience,I have never seen an Indian couple kiss openly in public.And I have already lost count of the no. of times I have seen this occurence in Europe."(Mind you its not that I kept count).But she simply replied that,"Its just that when you see two people in love,doesnt it look good if they just let their emotions flow.And what better way to do that by a passionate kiss."

Now here we come to the part about sexual frustrations.I think that its high time that the society thinks about the large amount of time and energy that youth seem to be spending in India thinking about girls/boys and in general about sex.The one main reason why everyone wants to escape from the country is also to gain sexual freedom.I have a feeling that this freedom has to play a role in making French youth efficient being really motivated about work when it matters and at the same time partying and 'having fun' at regular intervals.For example it seems very surreal and sad for me to think of how most of the times a couple in India more so in institutions like IIT has to hide their affections for each other and devise plans and strategies to meet and just to talk in some neutral places far away from the snides and hawkish glare of their batchmates.And how one not help being liberated to be in an environment where 'how many and Who' is a more logical query than 'ever or if''.I have realized the importance of many of our Indian values and traditions but I still cant appreciate this brazen hypocrisy and insensitiveness which leads to such severe frustrations and so many social problems.