Kiss and Controversies

Kissing Aishwarya on the screen by Hrithik seems to have stirred a hornet's nest, as the so-called watch guards of decency and morality brigade are baying for the blood of the producer and director of DHOOM:2. They seem to be forgetting the fact that it is very bold initiative that has been attempted by a director on an Indian screen after a long time in a very aesthetic manner, which is shot more with sensuality than with sexuality.

May be, the brouhaha may have more to do with the fact that the players in question are Aishwarya and Hrithik who have an holier than the thou image in the minds of the average cine grower and they may have grimaced at expression of this side on the screen. However, the public came out of the movie and forgot about it, but the moral watchers seem to be consciously tried to keep the simmering controversy alive. Was a controversy raised when Mallika Shehrawat had kissed Himanshu Mallik 17 times on the screen or for that matter when Anil Kapoor smooched Sameera Reddy in MUSAFIR? None, what so ever. Or rewind to come back of Dimple Kapadia when she expressed her love for Rishi Kapoor in SAAGAR. At that time the society was still conservative but it was taken in a sporting manner.

The Indian film industry has had a glorious tradition of kissing on the screen, and none other than Devika Rani took the initiative in this direction when she exchanged a very prolonged kiss in 1933 with her husband Himanshu Roy in the film KARMA. The advent of the Indian censor board after independence led to banning of kissing on the Indian screen in 1952, under the false presumption that kiss is not a part of the Indian tradition, which is a big misnomer. Any relationship begins with a kiss.

Do the people of the moral brigade want us to go back to the days when the intimacy between a hero and a heroine was either expressed through intertwining of flowers or filling of water in a pitcher or other such symbolic expressions of love which where a sine quo non for the Indian film industry for quite some time.

A new clarion call has been made by the top actors signifying the change in norms for the industry of the country. And once the lead has been taken from the top it ought to be encouraged, after all the same was not attempted by the actors of the past, and so kiss which otherwise is an integral component of the drama enacted on the silver screen the world over, continued to be shrouded in the mystique of inanimate objectification. The time for it has come to be accorded its due recognition, and once it gets an aesthetic manifestation on a continued basis, the morality brigade would automatically become a minuscule minority.

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