The Kiss Saga

Google, the new age Guru tells me there is hardly any replacement for the word `sanskar’ in regional dialects. It remains the same in Hindi, Malayalam, Telegu and even Gujarati and Punjabi. In the last few days, no other word has reverberated in our household so much. Courtesy: kiss fest.

My in-laws have not gotten over the shock. They mourned over the death of sanskar at Marine Drive for two days. My husband treated the whole matter with contempt. And I debated with myself. Not sure if this was how one devil should be tackled -by unleashing another.

True, cops are averse to many things C, be it Cuddling, Caressing, Courting or simple Contact between a boy and girl. It runs in their blood. They like to scare lovers by asking for their parents’ mobile numbers. They like to read love letters and sound their lathi threatening to end any romance that comes their way.

But is it any different from the way the society behaves, i doubt. A hypocritic society can foster no better civil servants. If I talk to my husband’s friend for longer than usual, if i am on the phone for longer minutes, if i go to library with my male colleague, if i pillion ride with my photographer colleague for a newspaper assignment , if my male cousin calls upon me twice a week, if I attend a wedding with my brother and not my husband- I have seen many an eyebrows  quizzing me, many neighbors feeding on the fodder that I have just thrown to them and questioning my family secretly.

So then who is to blame? But the nonchalant continues to ignore the naysayers. They live, think, choose and do things in their own terms. It’s been so for me. End of the story.

For reasons innumerable, I think the people on the other side of the Earth are not always right. The West can go wrong too. I remember a US sociologist who visited our college soon after the US attack on Iraq. When asked why Jr Bush was acting the way he was, the man said, ``our civilisation is just 200 years old but you have the Mother of all civilisation. Cant you forgive?’’ I loved it.

The West often shows more respect to our culture than we ourselves do. I really think there is a dignity in controlled emotions , a grace in carefull dressing and a virtue in respecting one’s identity. To go public with all emotions is what animals do and probably why we call them animal instincts.

My father-in-law in one of these discussions the other day said there are more than 40 sanskaras listed in Vedas. But we follow or rather know less than 12.  Vidyarambham, vivaham, upanayanam all being part of the list. Over the years, everything has been diluted and maybe will go to mud in another half a decade, he rued.

I have no idea what the spiritual texts say but I believe I am born to a land of wisdom, where knowledge and traditions are rooted in each soil and branches out to all. It is also the land of Kamasutra. It depends how each person deciphers, decodes and respects the knowledge around. I do not believe in the adage that excuses people of their wrong deeds, however good the cause is. Instead, I believe in the subtleties of every human emotion. A stolen kiss, a measured silence, a curved smile, a wooing glance- I believe in old-fashioned love and still gets goosebumps rewinding it.