The Kiss - An Issue ??

You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss...~ Herman Hupfeld

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.~ Ingrid Bergman

Is not a kiss the very autograph of love?~ Henry Finck

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.~ Mistinguett

a peach is a peach, a plum is a plum, a kiss ain't a kiss without some tongue... so open up your mouthand close your eyes, and give your tongue some exercise...~ Diesel

Shabana Azmi, Nelson Mandela, Shilpa Shetty , Richard Gere, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad .......Does that ring a bell? Well its all about kissing :-)This morning, i saw the newspaper (Deccan Chronicle), and i was surprised by the front page news.... President of Iran admonished and the whole Islamic community angry with him... All because, he kissed his teacher's gloved hand on Teachers Day. The sin is that he kissed a woman in public and that it is against Islamic law to kiss someone unrelated to you. This is not considering the fact that his teacher is a very old woman, may be as old as your grandmother, and was his first grade teacher. The issue is that it is against the Islamic Sharia - whatever that is.I am not against any rules and laws and i respect all religions. But this incident has hit the world press, and even our Indian paper(s) have thought that its big and published it in the front page. So much for display of affection...From where i come from, Kerala's Syrian Christian community, its not a sin to kiss someone. Passionate kissing in public, though is forbidden :-). Its Ok to kiss and say good bye.Its not a kiss, lip on cheek, rather a cheek to cheek. We still call my grandmother who is touching 80, '' Umma Specialist '' which translates as " Kiss Specialist ''. All of us get kissed when we go to visit her. Be it when meeting her or saying goodbye to her. Most of the grandmother age, aunty age people - related/ non related in Kerala, i know of, kiss us all when we meet and part.
Not to be left out, we have a desi version of everything. Our very own Shilpa Shetty incident. So much of focus has gone into the incident, that it had sidelined all other major events of the country. People who dont participate in any socially useful meetings were seen to display mass protests, burn effigies and shout slogans. Please, we have better things to do in life. Instead of focussing on Shilpa and Richard, lets look at what we can do to bring people together to work against the evils that are dominating our society. And dear media, we are fed up of sensational news, models clothes falling off during catwalk, shilpa crying in Britian during the Big Brother show, shilpa getting kissed...We like better NEWS..Please give us a breaaaaaaaaaaak.