Friday 24 April 2009

Prelude To A Kiss


Go Kiss the World might me an invocation to our entrepreneurial wanderlust to elicit the Megallans and Vasco da Gammas amongst us but public kissing, it looks like, will never cease to ruffle a feather or two in India. A professor of psychology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, recently extolled the virtue of a lip lock that sparks off a complex chemical surge into the brain making a lover feel excited, happy or relaxed. Dentists say a good kiss prevents tooth decay as it stimulates the flow of saliva while fitness experts state that a long kiss helps to loose weight. A kiss releases adrenaline into the bloodstream and the heart pumps more blood into the body, there by pre-empting chances of heart blocks. By helping tone cheek and jaw muscles and prevent their sagging, the habit of compulsive kissing can hold back ageing. I could not, therefore, help admiring ‘James Belshaw’ and ‘Sophia Severin’, who in 2005 locked their lips-hold on your breath- for 31 hours and 30 minutes to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest kiss ever, at an event in London. But the question is, when does public smooching become taboo?? What is the threshold age for a human being to abdicate his normal right to kiss and be kissed in pubic?? When does the commonest form of showing love and affection morph into a no-go area of carnal passion to be decried in public??

Pity there was such brouhaha over Padmini Kolhapure planting a smooch on the Prince of Whales or Shabana Azmi kissing Nelson Mandela, or the Hollywood actor Richard Gere crooning over Shilpa Shetty only a couple of years ago. Ayatollah Khomeini outlawed kissing even between a man and his wife in Iran while, according to Genesis, God “infused the spirit of life” into a man with a kiss. We are thankful to the Delhi high court for its having dismissed criminal proceedings against a married couple charged with obscenity for allegedly kissing in the public. Ironically, we have no problem in the Roman categories of ‘osculum’ – the kiss of friendship on the face or cheeks and ‘basium’ – the kiss of affection on the lips, though the stricture, it looks like, applies to ‘sauvium’ – the lovers’ kiss of lip-to-lip variety. It is about time our moral brigade became less prudish about such inanities and was more vocal about other obscenities like child labour in India...”


This was an article in the editorial section of the Times of India, labeled under ‘Moral Police’, dated April 24th ’09. There is nothing to feel sheepish about it, what ever it said, made good enough sense to me. Thus, I felt obliged to place it up here, with the noble intension of helping those, who happened to miss it, or, even those who have the habit of re-taking things several times, before they get well settled into their heads.

So...what’s your take on this???

4 comments:

Silver Polish said...

1st kiss is always awesome.....screw moral police.....
wen it has to happen it happens..... place, time and people around dont matter..... :D

RicochetRabbit said...

only the first ?
I think I will like all of them equally.... :P

neways...the point is, people's perception of it as taboo...de'll argue dat it isnt...but will be skeptical of the beliefs of few unwanted and useless souls who might watch...

Unknown said...

Of all virtues of kissing 'losing weight' attracts me the most ;)

RicochetRabbit said...

yea..."Theee Most" :D