Delhi High Court recently absolved a couple of the charge of “sitting in an objectionable position near a Metro (railway station) pillar and kissing due to which passersby were feeling bad”. It ruled that an “expression of love by a young married couple” did not qualify as obscenity.

The key words: married couple. What if they were not married?

The court was not concerned with that academic question. But if you were a young married couple in Calcutta, would you be caught — and not just by the police — stealing a kiss behind a pillar at Rabindra Sadan station where love is so much in the air, outside?

Maybe not. What a couple — and it doesn’t really matter whether they’re married or not because staring, our joyful pastime, doesn’t reveal that secret anyway — dare to do in Delhi they don’t dare to do in Calcutta.

For they know the danger. Shuffling feet would fall still, gathering round the pillar, openly disapproving glances would be cast, throats would be cleared concertedly without planned orchestration and there would be mutterings of protest, if not outbursts of “chhi chhi” outrage.

Let alone an open-mouthed kiss, even a light kiss on the lips or a peck on the cheek can be life-threatening. In traditional Bengali society, only babies can be kissed in front of others, preferably by maternal women.

The kiss per se is still unthinkable in an old para environment. Unthinkable before the eyes of neighbours who have seen you grow up. Unthinkable before the eyes of the relatives. Unthinkable between married couples — maybe more so, for demonstration of passion among the married can be considered even more vulgar than among the unmarried. While a kiss is almost de rigueur in a respectable Bollywood film, not many in Tollywood kiss.

But people are trying.

Calcutta stares a lot. Not only at young couples kissing. “Sometimes people stare even when we are just sitting close together in a park, chatting,” says a 24-year-old student of animation technology who has been dating his 22-year-old girlfriend for a year.

The couple may not even be sitting together in a park. They may be grocery shopping and still be stared at and their status speculated upon. “My husband and I were grocery shopping one day at Spencer’s and suddenly this gentleman came and asked us whether we were married. He said that he and his wife had been discussing this for a long time and they wanted to know who was right in his or her guess,” recalled Madhu Bhattacharjee, who works in the media.

So who was right and pocketed the million? Madhu didn’t wait to ask.

This gum-like gaze, which follows like the pug in the mobile phone ad, may be losing its Nazi-sistic edge. For PDA is around us. Public Display of Affection is being put up at open, public spaces.

The mall has had a liberating effect on young love. Maybe because it seems like another world where one is cloaked in anonymity — far away from the para, far away from relatives. It’s also so un-Indian, un-Bengali that it helps shed inhibitions.

V-Day blooms

On Valentine’s Day on Saturday, as many flowers, trinkets, chocolates, CDs, iPods, diamonds and even, possibly, hearts were exchanged, especially in places like City Centre, South City Mall and Mani Square, with heart-shaped balloons floating in the background, some brave couples might have traded stolen kisses which we didn’t get to stare at.

We did find the City Centre fountain area rippling with Valentine couples, sitting closely together, some in colour-coordinated clothes, which is also a form of PDA — the lady in red, the young man in red and beige; sometimes the lady in red and the young man in red; sometimes both in pink — whispering, sharing an ice cream with their arms around each other, or holding each other’s hands or holding tightly onto each other, one neck nestled in the hollow of the other. Sometimes they looked like statues, sculpted into stillness by passion, sometimes more animated, perhaps even trying to kiss, maybe not very successfully, but no one gave a damn about the onlooker.

A Salt Lake resident in her 50s who refuses to go to the fountain area in City Centre, is particularly averse to going there on Valentine’s Day. “I would rather not see that,” she said.

THAT?

THAT is a far cry from the Calcutta of her youth, three decades earlier. In the Seventies, there was no City Centre, and there was no holding of hands either. Throwing arms around one another was beyond imagination. You were allowed to look into each other’s eyes but not get lost in them.

Chitra Mukherji was dating her husband Aroop Mukerji in 1965. “Back then a love marriage was a big thing. We wouldn’t indulge in a display of affection in public. In the car may be. Now you see couples cosying up all around you. Our eyes are used to it,” she laughs.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

At City Centre or South City Mall, the shoppers don’t look twice — or pretend not to look even once — when a young couple leap into each other’s arms after winning a contest. Yesss!

Even the lanes and bylanes of the more affluent areas of the city — Salt Lake, south Calcutta — are opening up to PDA. “Holding hands and hugging are fine. A quick peck on the cheek is also okay, but not a lingering one. And a lip lock (as the kiss is now known in India) in public is something I am not comfortable with,” says Argha Bose, a 27-year-old working in Bangalore who recently married his girlfriend of two years.

A list of places that are conducive — or not — to PDA is readily available. What is acceptable or doable in Salt Lake is not so in Kankurgachhi. Walking around hand-in-hand would be a problem for Rupsha Brahmachari, a Presidency student who stays in Kankurgachhi. “My locality is not just conservative. It is also nosy. So it is a no-no,” she says.

Inside the Presidency College canteen, where couples are sitting cosily, second-year student Simantini Biswas says that areas in south Calcutta are more permissive. North Calcutta may still stare at a jeans-clad woman.

Sudakshina Saha and Mohan Dutta, who have been seeing each other for three years, are sitting on the steps of City Centre, holding hands. “PDA is okay but only in certain places. Millennium Park is fine. So are multiplexes. But not buses,” says Sudakshina.

By now, it’s clear that it’s a class thing.

If the malls are liberating, the dance floor can be downright encouraging. Nightclubs allow a couple to go the farthest, within “acceptable limits”. At any nightclub, as the lights get dimmer, the music louder and the alcohol headier, who cares about others, because the others are just like you. The experienced nightclub-goer knows that the bouncers don’t spring into action if they see a couple dancing real close or kissing.

Nightclubs too draw the line at one point, though. “Holding hands, the casual hug or peck is fine but no French kisses or groping. Of course, many kids try to meet their girlfriends on the sly at the club, but we take care and ensure there is no cuddling in the dark. We have five bouncers to take care. We have an image and we cannot endanger that for some people,” says Amit Hathiramani of HHI.

Kissing, then and now

Kissing, as you can see, can be dangerous.

As Sohini Sen, an entrepreneur in her mid-thirties, discovered 14 years ago. “My boyfriend and I were caught smooching in the lift. My aunt saw us and we had to tell her that we had had a fight and were making up,” she says.

All was presumably forgiven and Sohini went on to marry her boyfriend and is married to him still and, surprise, surprise, they still kiss. But some things have changed.

“Last year we kissed on the dance floor for New Year’s. I don’t see anything wrong. At least we don’t fight in public. The moral police always has something to say, but in Calcutta where does one cuddle up?” she asks.

Yes, we don’t need the Sri Ram Sena here. We have banished all the cuddle-conducive coves.

To come back to the old, hypothetical question: what happens if a couple were caught kissing “sitting in an objectionable position near a pillar at a Metro station” in Calcutta?

It depends.

If kissing in public, or any form of PDA is deemed obscene, it will fall under Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code.

“An obscene act is something that hurts the decency and morality of the society. There cannot be a generalisation here as it is dependent on the situation. What is not obscene today may have been considered so 30 years back. In case of a complaint, it depends upon the court to interpret the law as it deems fit and decide to what extent such an act is offensive,” says Joymalya Bagchi, a lawyer.

The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2008, approved by President Pratibha Patil recently may make things better for the young. Where the punishment is up to seven years, the police will first have to issue a notice to those against whom a complaint has been made or evidence found to come and meet them.

The cops make as strong a case for the right interpretation. “We do not intervene unless a couple are found in such a compromising position that it outrages the morality of the society,” said a senior officer of Calcutta police.

Many couples say the police call sooner than does Cupid. So go seek out the PDA-friendly places where private security guards search your bag and not frisk your morality. And, as they say, if you can do it in the mall today, you can do it in the market tomorrow. Calcutta may not be Delhi yet but there’s no reason to kiss the public kiss goodbye.

Or, as Shakespeare said, almost: teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made for kissing, ladies and gentlemen, not for such contempt for the public kiss.

pecking order

On the Metro
Yes: Holding hands
No: Hugging, kissing, cuddling, standing close
Couples don’t really mind

Salt Lake and south Calcutta
Yes: Holding hands, hugging, pecking, cuddling
No: Smooching
Couples don’t really mind

Park Street
Yes: Holding hands, hugging, cuddling, kissing (even a smooch is okay sometimes), heavy petting (okay sometimes)
Couples like Park Street

North Calcutta
Yes: Holding hands (sometimes)
No: Hugging, kissing, pecking, cuddling
Couples find it tough here

 

(Some names have been changed)

Are you for/against people kissing in public? Write to ttmetro@abpmail.com