If sex was to be implied, the rain was held the biggest culprit. Since the release of Bobby, kissing is now an accepted expression, or rather a norm in our films. Ironically, there were some films made abroad with Indian artistes where kissing was found to be okay for the Hindi audience! Then, how come the same Hindi filmstars could not kiss in a Hindi film made in India? But, the Censor Board in India is never known for its logic or objectivity! Then, the kiss staged a comeback with Raj Kapoor’s “Bobby” in (1973). Films like “Karma” (1933) had elaborate kissing scenes. Kissing was as much a part of Hindi films as it was in Hollywood. The viewers were expected to understand what it meant.
For a long time, even rape scenes culminated with a suggestive scene of, say milk on a stove spilling over, or a sudden burst of a water fountain. That looked macabre but the joke was, ‘I want to be a film villain when I grow up’, as any youth would say. The closest to onscreen sex a film would come to was when the villain tried to force himself on the heroine. It was an era when a couple hugged on screen, the heroine covered her bust with her arms! How did a kissing scene reach the viewer? Well, it was when two flowers - roses - swung in the wind and touched each other, or two birds coochie-cooing with beaks touching, or a hero or heroine emerging from behind a tree pursing or wiping his/her lips! This was the closest a film came to suggesting intimacy, no sex. To depict a kiss, various suggestive alternatives were devised by the filmmakers. Kissing was fine in our films till India gained Independence, following which the Cinematograph Act was enacted in 1952, which, in turn, gave birth to censorship, which was meant to regulate the public exhibition of films. For a long time, for the censors, even kissing on screen was a no-no, not to mention sex. Then there was the omnipresent Censorship. Sex was purely a bedroom thing, not discussed openly and, hence, never in films. Films meant family entertainment, the word was never even mentioned in the same breath with films.
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