For someone who was squirming and squeamish about smooching his then girlfriend Kareena Kapoor for the last few shots of Jab We Met, Shahid Kapur has grown blasé about it pretty quickly. During Jab We Met, it was Kareena who was the veteran kisser. Remember the famous tabloid ‘scoop’ where Kareena and Shahid were caught on camera by an onlooker when the two were French kissing in a public restaurant? In that too, it was Kareena on top of the situation, no puns at all.

On screen, she’d already smooched co-stars like Fardeen a few times, so when Imtiaz Ali wanted Shahid to kiss her on the lips in Jab We Met, the hero was hesitant. He’d never kissed before an audience but Kareena shrugged it off as part of the job. Anyway, it turned out to be more of a farewell kiss as they puckered up before the camera and the film was a hit, but Kareena-Shahid had already split by the time Jab We Met reached the theatres.

After the split, Kareena went on to take heavy-duty smooching in her stride and whether it was Kambakkht Ishq or Kurbaan or 3 Idiots, all through 2009 she went ahead and locked lips with Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan and Aamir Khan.

This time, Shahid Kapoor was not going to be left behind. After he was ‘broken in’ by Kareena during Jab We Met, he helped Priyanka Chopra with her first big smooch in Kaminey. While Priyanka was conscious that she was kissing before an entire unit, Shahid was the cool dude who handled it like a pro.

By the time Chance Pe Dance came along, rumour had it that he went to the sets with lips puckered up and innocent-looking Genelia D’souza even kissed him happily. But looking at a kiddie audience, the passionate smooch was reportedly edited out.

Shahid had barely exhaled from that bout of kissing when he went to America, Bangkok and then Mumbai itself to shoot a film for Yashraj. The whisper is that along with the Punjabi kudi of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, Shahid has set the screen ablaze like a seasoned Lothario. For Anushka Sharma who had an antiseptic role with Shah Rukh Khan in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (SRK and Salman don’t do kissing scenes at all), smooching before the camera was a new experience. But she did it with Shahid and since she’s got a Lara Croft kind of ‘ballsy’ role in this adventure caper, her kisses with Shahid were full on and passionately energetic, not soft and romantic. By the way, in this Yashraj film, Anushka has done a complete turnaround. Unlike the demure salwar-kameez clad Amritsari Punjabi of Rab Ne..., Anushka has not worn a single ethnic outfit in this Shahid Kapoor starrer. Of course, when shooting began, she had no experience in screen smooching and Shahid was the one who’d been there and done it all. But by the time the film was shot, Anushka Sharma had also become an experienced hand as she shot for not one but three full-fledged kissing scenes with Shahid!

Yashraj’s new Shahid Kapoor-Anushka film is being directed by Parmeet Sethi, someone who has all along been better known as Archana Puran Singh’s husband. Called Bittu by close friends, Parmeet was the actor Kajol was supposed to wed in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and he has years of acting behind him. Unlike all other directors who only ask their actors to get intimate for a scene, Parmeet was immensely popular on TV in serials like Dastaan and he himself had personal experience at doing kissing scenes before the camera. Archana’s husband had hit the headlines years ago as the first TV star to have done a long, nine-minute kissing scene with co-star Seema Kapoor in Dastaan. After his own experience, he of course had no qualms at all directing Shahid and Anushka to do the same for his untitled film!

Talking of smooching, Vidya Balan who is out to shock with her new Vishal Bhardwaj film Ishqiyan, has got away with an ‘A’ certificate and no cuts at all from the censors. Her kissing scene with Arshad Warsi in Ishqiyan has already been talked about quite a bit. But she also has some hard, crude dialogues like a sentence where she says, ‘Chootiyam sulphate’. It took several days of rehearsals and a workshop for Vidya to completely shed her inhibitions and utter those words with panache!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor,

Movie Mag International