Lately, there’s been a surge of PDA around me.
Now if PDA still means those weird looking handheld devices suave secretaries in old Hindi movies used to flaunt, to you, then you may consider finding yourself a place in the Rare and Exotic Species section of a museum. These days everyone’s got a personal digital assistant, called smartphone. They are handheld, look sleek and they can speak too!
Anyway, before I get carried away and start speaking about how smartphones are the most essential part of one’s existence, let me just take a deep breath and bring my attention back to the topic at hand.
PDA – Public Display of Affection! It’s everywhere!
In Starbucks, waiting in the line for the morning coffee to wake me up, I notice a couple two spots up – already wide awake and feeling passionate enough to share continuous pecks. It’s a pattern. Hug the shoulders – give a rub – kiss and do it all over again.
Waiting for the ferry, tired and irritated at the end of the day, there’s another couple ready to provide free entertainment. One moment they stand before me discussing about buying a new computer, the next moment I see them entangled in a fierce kiss!
Couples violently in love are everywhere! Hetero and homosexuals alike! There’s no bar to PDA.
Interestingly they were all Desis. Adults in probably their late twenties or thirties. The Indian couple in Starbucks kept kissing noisily while the others looked on with expressions ranging from amusement to disgust. Even more interestingly, the girls all behaved like creeper plants. They needed help even to stand straight on their own legs. They kept leaning on the guys. Heck! Some even spoke in half formed baby voices to each other! Once seeing a couple acting as though they were joined at the hip, my amused husband commented, “They might have taken ‘Till death do us apart’ a little too literally!”
Sometimes watching these desi couples I get this odd feeling. They always seem ready to go in front of other people. Arms so tightly around each other, it’s a wonder they can breathe. The extreme making out, the feeling each other up all over – enough to gross anyone out. I can’t help but think, in their hurry to claim the freedom a first world country offers they often overstep the boundary between decent and indecent. In order to compensate what they couldn’t do back at home, they often overdo it. The relationship dynamics of these people baffle me.
I don’t need to be smothered to know that I am loved. Or perhaps it’s just me.
Trust me, I am all for PDAs. It’s good, freeing even. I don’t have problems in a spontaneous hug here or a passionate kiss there! A genuine display of affection is never so displeasing to the eye. I feel affection for a crowd is an act, it just seems so fake. There is substance in subtlety in intimacy - that personal, deep connection between two people - where outside attention is irrelevant because everyone else disappears.
But is there really a need to make the people around to stand witness over the overtly gross lovey dovey stuff? Doesn’t it just show their insecurity over anything else? What do you think?
Love,
© copyright 2014 – All rights reserved
Riot of Random
