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This past April, protests could be heard loudly throughout Bombay India, with rioters crowding the streets, burning effigies, and even shouting  death to one of  its beloved Indian actresses,  Shilpa Shetty.  What in the world could she have done, that would cause rioters to take to the streets and chant "Death to Shilpa!?"  I know, maybe word got out that Shilpa had been videotaped doing drugs, or maybe she was caught driving drunk while she slammed into a telephone pole!  No my fellow pulsers, it was even worse than that.  You see, while Richard Gere was visiting India in April to attend an AIDS Awareness rally, Mr. Gere went crazy and started kissing Shilpa Shetty like a madman, he even bent Ms. Shetty over and kissed her on the cheek!  My god, and to top it all off, Richard Gere even bowed at the end of his tasteless behavior, only to add insult to injury! 

As crazy as that may sound, those few seconds in which we witnessed a difference in cultural attitudes and behaviors, it made me realize that India, in all its claims of being an advance country, needs to get past the stone age days and ask herself what crime is it to kiss someone in public?  How can India have one of the biggest movie industries in the world, with girls like Mallika Sherawat and Celina Jaitley shaking their groove thangs' half naked in movie videos, and at the same time denounce public forms of affection like the world is coming to an end?

I can understand that some individuals place Indian actresses in such high regards that no-one should ever be able to touch them, except for themselves in their own minds, but where was the wrong-doing?  When Shilpa Shetty was asked by the Press Trust Of India about the ordeal, she explained  "It was not so obscene.  This was not such a big thing for people to over-react in such a manner.......I understand people's sentiments, but I don't want a foreigner to take bad memories from here.  I understand this is his culture, not ours."

It is an embarrassment for India, and those individuals who took to the streets, to make such a big deal out this situation. While India has one of the worst homeless and jobless rates in the entire world, people are ready to waste their time in the streets over Richard Gere than worrying about greater issues at hand.  There is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing wrong with public affection, it does not corrupt or misguide the youth, nor does it cause individuals to become converted into "devilism" or some other form of irrational being.

Before India embarreses itself again in the eyes of the world, She and her citizens need to step up and explain to their children and show their children it is okay to hold hands in public, it is okay to kiss your partner, it is okay to view these situations on television, and explain the dangers of un-protected or risky sexual behavior, because regardless of what cultural ideologies "think," these behaviors are a fact of life, and have been for thousands of years.  If India is going to go so far as to show half naked women, dancing around in rain filled, night club light filled, smoked filled atmospheres in movie sequences, cut the nonsense and for everyone's sake start allowing and accepting individuals who kiss each other and show public affection.  Because as hard as this may be to believe, we weren't just thrown onto earth like seeds that blow in the wind, we all came and were born through the affectionate behavior of our parents.  Oh the Irony!