Richard Gere: Caught Between Kiss & Indian Truckers

Gere (Left) kisses Shetty during an AIDS awareness programme in New Delhi April 15, 2007. (REUTERS/Tanushree Punwani)

Thousands of truckers cheered wildly as American actor Richard Gere kissed (Indian) actress Shilpa Shetty on her cheeks during an event to promote safe sex and raise AIDS awareness among a high-risk group, writes Prithwish Ganguly of the Reuters.

“Hollywood star Gere had joined Shetty, the winner of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ reality TV show in Britain this year, in an anti-AIDS drive among truckers in India, the country with the world’s largest number of people living with HIV.

” ‘No condom, no sex,’ 58-year-old Gere shouted in Hindi to thousands of truck drivers who roared his words back in unison at a dusty fairground late on Sunday. They whooped with delight and whistled loudly as Gere swooped down on a visibly delighted Shetty to kiss her…

(But this Gere-Shetty kiss has led to protests in the holy city of Varanasi where Shetty fans burnt Gere’s effigy.)

(Now there is a demand to arrest Richard Gere.)

“India has around 5.7 million people living with the virus, according to the United Nations, and thousands of truckers are HIV-positive…” (To read my earlier post India’s Major ‘War’: Saving Kids from HIV, AIDS pl click here…)

Earlier, Richard Gere, along with over 125 scientists, physicians and religious scholars from across the world, participated in a five-day conference on ‘Mind and Life’ at Dharamsala, the Himalayan abode of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama in India.

The meet focused on the issues and challenges highlighted in Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s book, ‘The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.’