KISS CAM

 There are two kinds of people in this world, one who kiss in public and one who don’t and there is a clear cultural divide between the two types. The public kissers are from the Western hemisphere and the private kissers are from the Eastern. So no surprises when a term called ‘kiss cam’ originates in that part of the world. Frankly I hadn’t heard of this term, till this kiss became the kiss of death, you know like the Vish-Kanyas of ancient India.

 These girls for the ignoramuses of the West were supposed to be specially trained and groomed with doses of snake venom to kiss their target literally to death. Here unfortunately, there was kiss cam but no kiss, but it did end up devastating the love life of Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot. The kiss of death for their professional, personal and social life.Kisses have played havoc even in our parliament, some of you may recall, else just to jog your memory, you may like to revisit (https://thesuyashsharma.com/kissa-kiss-ka/).

I became aware of Cold Play only after their concert tickets in India became more precious than gold and diamonds this January. It was reported that the going rate at one time was almost Rs 10 lakhs. While I do enjoy English music, but my tastes have got stuck with the Old Country songs and the music of the 60s to 80s. A Frank Sinatra, Jim Reeves, Kenny Rogers, Don Williams or Abba, BoneyM, occasionally Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams or Paul Anka, John Denver, Cliff Richard types. We just didn’t evolve after that, so Cold Play was given a cold shoulder till first, the concert ticket prices in India, which reminded us of the 70s again where ‘paanch ka dus’ (black marketing of cinema tickets) and now this ‘kiss cam’ scandal.

The term itself is a ‘scam’, imagine you are enjoying the event in the company of that someone special and like a ‘Peeping Tom’, you not only disturb their pleasurable moments but go ahead and splash it on the ‘Jumbotron’. The Peeping Tom goes about Tom‘toming’ it to the world. ‘Kiss cam’ for the uninformed or those born in the 50-60-70 decades, like me, is that

 moment when a couple is homed onto by the roving eye and then when they appear on the ‘jumbotron’, they are expected to kiss in full public view, the public in turn applauds this sporting gesture of theirs. This activity is typically conducted during the breaks in the event to keep the public glued to the idiot boxes. Incidentally Obamas too have been at the receiving end once and they dutifully played to the gallery. Celebrities perforce need to oblige. We Indians are known to have given this kiss a miss in many a Bollywood movies, with two flowers symbolically conveying it so oh so subtly. If only these Western guys understood, Andy and Kristin would have been spared the blushes. After all it was just an embrace which ended up embarras-sing them. Embrace and embarrassment reminds me of that jhappi which was far from being magical(jadu ki jhappi) turned out to be quite grumpy (https://thesuyashsharma.com/the-embrace/).

Andy and Kristin were the top honcho of ‘Astronomer’, they ought to be looking for a good astrologer now to save their skin.