How old are Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur? How old are all the people who have been shocked or titillated by their having French-kissed, or not French-kissed, in a Mumbai restaurant? How old are the celebrities who have been defending Kareena?s ?honour?? How old are the Indian media? In short, how old is adult Indian society? From the mix of prurience, righteousness, illogic and sheer silliness that is being whipped up around the Kapoor & Kapur non-kiss, one would think that urban Indian adulthood is stuck in a sort of cringing adolescence. Yet, real Indian adolescents, in another city, have recently shown chillingly adult expertise in a situation that had gone well beyond a public snog. It is not just the use of a camera-phone that links the Mumbai palaver with the Delhi schoolchildren and their video footage auctioned on the internet. There are common issues that arise from reactions to the two episodes which go to the heart of the Great Indian Hypocrisy in matters sexual.

Passionate denial has characterized both aftermaths. This has led to peculiar and comic contradictions. Kareena and Shahid have simultaneously denied having kissed in public and asserted their right to privacy. So have senior actors-turned-MP, and on grounds that combine confused righteousness with bizarre social assumptions. Kareena is a ?very fine girl? because she ?belongs to a respectable family?, and hence could neither kiss in public nor lie about it. (Nothing, of course, is at stake for Shahid.) Yet, if the kissing is by consent and done ?aesthetically?, then it is ?beautiful?. Otherwise it is ?ugly?. In the Delhi case, the focus has now shifted from the errant youngsters to the IIT student who had sold their clipping on the internet. His family, former schoolteachers and townsfolk firmly believe that he could never have done such a thing because he was always good in his studies, wore heavy spectacles, never asked for money and was reared with solid family values ? the same values that might now prevent his sisters from getting married because of their brother?s ignominy.

Behind all this is a fundamental inability to look the fact of human sexuality in the face, leading to an unthinking yet concerted infantilizing of adult life. This looking away is particularly unfortunate in the case of teenage sex, when the parties are legally under-age but physiologically mature. Discipline at home and at school will then have to strike a realistic and ethical balance between providing information and nurturing a sense of responsibility and carefulness. But in the case of adult professionals like Kareena and Shahid, the sexual double standards, at every level, become more straightforwardly gratuitous and absurd. When grown-up men and women have to deny what comes to them naturally because their society cannot honestly accommodate their adulthood, then it can only result in a kind of moral and sexual schizophrenia. It is dangerous and sad that it is within such a scenario that India has to start practising, thinking and talking about safe sex.