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.’
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.