Gere & India: To Kiss Or Not To Kiss
(File photo. Richard Gere, left, prepares to hug actress Shilpa Shetty during an event for HIV-AIDS awareness in New Delhi. AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)
Here’s more on the Hollywood movie star Richard Gere and Indian film star Shilpa Shetty who are embroiled in a controversy for kissing in public in India.
India is a nation struggling to come to terms with its own views on women and sexuality – and kissing has become a symbolic line in the sand for India’s self-appointed stewards of tradition, says The Christian Science Monitor.
“Public kissing brings a $12 fine in Delhi. Yet onscreen, Bollywood heroines sigh and gyrate to rhythms that might make Hugh Hefner blush. Last year, political opponents called on the chief minister of the state of Rajasthan to resign because she offered a ceremonial kiss of welcome to a businesswoman at the World Economic Forum.”
If the theory that India gifted the art of kiss to the world is correct, then why this hullabaloo? For more on the history of kiss please click here…
(Khajuraho, India, Chitragupta Temple. The Kiss, circa 1000)
