The drama about Rahul Gandhi's blink-and-miss flying kiss

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Parliament, more known for discussing kissa kursi ka is now embroiled in kissa kiss ka. One thing is for sure, Rahul has brought back that very 1980s phenom: the flying kiss. It was my uncle who first taught me the flying kiss.

I was nine. We'd gone to see my father off at Santa Cruz airport. He was catching a flight to America.

I blew some kisses at random aeroplanes. The flying kiss is pretty much out of fashion now. The occasional batsman still uses it to celebrate a century, using the bat as a launching pad to blow kisses into the stands.

The preferred cricket celebration nowadays is to drop the bat, stick two fingers into one's ears and shut one's eyes. The gesture symbolises shutting out outside noise. Rahul should try it next time he's in Parliament.

The thing is we, Indians, have always been queasy about kissing. When I was a student at Oxford, lovers kissed everywhere and anywhere — under gargoyles, outside the library, the HMV on High Street… India's moral police, meanwhile, devoted its energies to attacking couples caught holding hands in crummy parks. Kissing on the dance floor was acceptable in Bombay, but was frowned upon even by the Khan Market gang in Delhi.

There was also the social kiss in England, which took some practice to master. It doesn't come naturally to us. Should one go for the left cheek first or the right? Does one kiss three times — left, right, left — or is one peck enough? Should it be two? In our films, the hero and heroine never kissed.

Even now, our actors look uncomfortable kissing on screen. Curiously, the intimate scenes featuring homosexual characters, like in the first season of Made in Heaven, come off as far more natural. Songs about kissing, like 'Jumma Chumma De De' from Hum,