Tales of A Clueless Travler
There are many reasons to want to burn Richard Gere in Effigy, I find this among the more humorous:
By SAM DOLNICK, Associated Press WriterMon Apr 16, 11:24 AM ET
Angry crowds in several Indian cities burned effigies of Richard Gere on Monday after he swept a popular Bollywood actress into his arms and kissed her several times during an AIDS-awareness event.
Photographs of the 57-year-old actor embracing Shilpa Shetty and kissing her on the cheek at an HIV/AIDS awareness event in New Delhi were splashed across Monday's front pages in India — a country where sex and public displays of affection are largely taboo.
In Mumbai, members of the right-wing Hindu nationalist group Shiv Sena beat burning effigies of Gere with sticks and set fire to glamorous shots of Shetty.
Similar protests broke out in other cities, including Varanasi, Hinduism's holiest city, and in the northern town of Meerut, where crowds chanted "Down with Shilpa Shetty!"
The two appeared at a press conference in New Delhi on Sunday to highlight the HIV/AIDS epidemic among India's truck drivers. In front of a cheering crowd, Gere kissed the giggling Shetty on the hand, then kissed her on both cheeks before bending her in a full embrace to kiss her cheek again.
"This is a bit too much," Shetty said after the embrace.
On Monday, Shetty tried to stamp out the controversy.
......The spokesman for Hindu nationalist party Bharatiya Janata Party condemned the kiss.
"Such a public display is not part of Indian tradition," said Prakash Javadekar, according to PTI.
Personally I think our culture's gotten a little too touchy feely and it cheapens true intimacy when everyone's your best friend on a first name basis and deserving a kiss...perhaps they take it to the opposite extreme in Inja, but really, how could Gere be so entirely clueless about something that any first time traveler to India knows - PDA is a no-no. Is he also aware he is clearly from another race, another culture and that most males of that "other) race and culture would take this as an affront? Apparently not.
All that said, India's fondness for rioting at the slightest provocation would be amusing if it weren't so often deadly. It also indicates the growing aggressiveness of the Hindu Nationalist party - whose actions are often misunderstood or filtered through politically correct news media- for example the wester, liberal press takes delight in the renaming of ancient cities such as Bombay to Mumbai, or Madras to Chennai - not understanding the motivation behind it.
It would be something akin to an "Ayran Nations" type party coming to extreme strength in America and removing historic names like, say Manhattan because of its non-Aryan origin. Somehow, I don' t think that would get the soft press afforded the Bharatiya Janata, whose members have often openly advocated violence against Sikhs, Muslims and Christians (the latter the New York Times, of course is indifferent to).
I give India's 'democracy' another 50 years, tops.
3 comments:
Personally I think our culture's gotten a little too touchy feely and it cheapens true intimacy when everyone's your best friend on a first name basis and deserving a kiss
I could tell you so many things about this matter! but you'll never care ,so I'll say is sad you think that way, but worse if you feel that way.
Please, do tell. Many years ago, when people called one another mister and misses it was a symbol of true intmacy or friendship when someone said, please call me Cynthia...now strangers go straight to calling Miss Cynthia Farnsworth "cindy"
The facts I could bring to light if I do tell,are very precious to share in a conversation with another human being.
Affection, love,the heart itself,is something too precious for me, and even the fact that I don't know you and I'll probably never will,I do respect you and I would only go further in a conversation of this nature,if I can see a human being in front of me, eyes to eyes, soul to soul.
Nevertheless,I keep trying to bring you some warm light with my comments,that's my nature,nurturing,that's my blessing as a woman.
And some how, is a gift for you as well.
Heavens knows better than us what we need and always send it,soem times in very misterious ways.
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