Random Expressions

Bring out the enforcements. Call the protectors. Burn effigies. Damage properties. Take out to the street. How dare the public go about earning their roti, kapda aur Mercedez¹ when our thousand year old yet vulnerable like a kid culture is again under attack? Foreign hand or rather foreign mouth has again swooped over our petite modesty to kiss and ravage, and lo and behold, that too publicly. It’s a different matter that Shilpa Shetty hardly looks like a wronged woman, and certainly not when a several-million-pound win is not at stake.

For the second time in just a few months Shilpa Shetty has managed to represent Indian culture and aesthetics and this time it’s not all Goody goody! Oh yes, she giggled through it all, which is actually the cause of ire. She should have protested. And, then she should have seen how Big Brothers in far flung cities rallied around her. Tsk, tsk, Shilpa you simply forgot the rules of the same game which you yourself created. My suggestion: call an impromptu press conference, and yes, don’t forget to carry that glycerine bottle with you; in any case, you rarely use it these days since films are really not coming your way.

All our high-flung notions about India shining and poised were cruelly ripped when Richard Gere pulled Shilpa in a tight hug and showered her with copious kisses; suddenly, uncomfortable memories of the eighties erupted where Padmini Kolhapure had pecked on Prince Charles cheeks or when Shabana Azmi kissed Nelson Mendela and the entire nation felt outraged. That was the repressive eighties, this is the progressive millennium, yet the reactions are no better, and the progress barely mentionable. If anything, due to the excessive media coverage, the consequence is more telling and troubling.

The entire report on the issue gave a feeling of deja vu. The protests came from the same centers like Bhopal, Indore or Varanasi. The same kind of hyperbole forwarded about values, culture and tradition . The same kind of nuisance created. (I dread to think of normal people stuck in the traffic jams in the sweltering North Indian heat when the hooligans went about their mission in saving Bharatiya izzat²!)

Strange! Our culture is brutally hurt when Shilpa Shetty gets the kiss-shower publicly, yet it continues to survive and smile when hundreds of girls are showered with shame and ignominy in the open air brothel at Bharatpur, pushed into prostitution by their own families! Strange! Our culture is virulently verbal when lovers move in the park hand in hand, yet it gets a vitamin boost behind closed door where we have single-mindedly gone about in the mission of increasing the population to impossible levels. Perhaps the closed doors are to be blamed. Or maybe the flowers touch each other too much³, because after all we are Indians, we do not do sex, our birds and bees are responsible for the burgeoning population, that s why we are all a stinging and humming nation sans any humanity! Strange! Our traditions jolt into a frantic frenzy in teaching sex education to kids, yet it slips into a numbed silence when the AIDS figures rise faster than the appendage that transmits the disease. Strange! We react so boldly on some film or cricket star who can take their own good care, yet not a drop of tear is spent on the defenseless widows languishing in near oblivion in Vrindavan and Varanasi!

The hollow drum of Bharatiya parampara⁴ has been beaten enough. Today it doesn’t emanate any sweet music but sounds irritatingly cacophonous. Can we please allow it to rest? Along with this stupid non-issue about Richard Gere-Shilpa Shetty!

Glossary

1. Roti kapda aur makaan, literally meaning bread, cloth and housing, is a typical Indian phrase used to depict the three important pillars on which man survives.
2. Bharatiya izzat - Indian honor
3. For years Indian films shied from showing a kiss or love-making scene, using two flowers touching each other as a bizarre symbolism
4. Bharatiya parampara - Indian tradition

Related Reading - A Post on Mika-Rakhi Sawant Kiss Controversy
Additional Reading (Non Related) - Blog Carnival on ‘Observations of Life’- Some very interesting posts, and yes, my post ‘Sycophants in office’ is also featured.

Technorati : Culture, India, Indian, Kiss, Richard Gere, Shilpa Shetty, Tradition
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 7:33 am and is filed under Issues & Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.