N was 3 years old and very restless. We needed to get out of the house. I took him to a play zone in a mall close to home. We entered a digital photo booth, made some goofy, crazy, kissy faces, selected the charcoal pencil mode and Van Gogh (yes that was the name) created this picture for us. My Ghar ki Lakshmi (the lady who helps us keep our home a home!) loved it so much that she got it framed. It hangs in our study now. I look at it and sigh, I can’t give N those delicious, slurpy, cheek biting kisses anymore. He thrusts his still soft teenage cheeks at me occasionally (after much groveling from my part) and scrunches up his eyes tightly while I give him a kiss, only one kiss allowed per cheek. I accept the quota, soon even this offer may be rescinded.
I still remember the soft kiss my mother gave me each night after my bedtime story, but that stopped after I turned 9 or 10. I am sure my parents did their fair share of kissing me when I was a baby (and each other-BTS!) but being a typical Indian anti PDA family, love was always in the air, not on the lips!
I never, ever thought of kissing anyone on campus, ok, correction, I may have thought of it, but the hot and passionate imaginary kiss was always immediately replaced with the image of my father, sitting on the back of my uncle’s scooter after dropping me off at the hostel, wagging his finger at me and saying “Supri, no emotional entanglements. You have come here to study so do only that.” So Supri did only that and waited patiently for her parents to find her a suitable boy. The only rebellious thing Supri did was kissing the suitable boy after her engagement and *gasp* before her wedding. And how is the kissing now?
Oh well, she don’t kiss and tell!
In dreams and IRL :-)
God what is it with me and this type of poetry?!
Remember the time a rose or some other suitable large flower hid desi lovers faces while they pretended to do “lip to lip” kiss? I was initially mildly shocked to see Indians locking lips on the silver screen. We were so used to “foreigners” doing it. Now I say “go for it babe” while wondering about oral hygiene factors. I read somewhere long ago that a famous Hollywood actor suffered from severe halitosis and ever since then I have wondered how actors manage multiple kissing scenes. How many breath mints do they pop, how many times do they use breath spray, do they brush their teeth between shots? I mean I brush my teeth several times before meeting my dentist even though I don’t need to kiss her!
Total piece of trivia I discovered; the actress Devika Rani kissed her co-star Himanshu Rai on the lips waaaay back in 1933 in the film Karma!
Much love my darling fellow writers, here is wishing you all a wonderful 2025! Mwah, Mwah!
Thank you
for this prompt, I had fun writing this piece:-)
Hehehe I loooove this. Very good food for thought 🥰
Read it again after it got featured in OSC, Supriya and thoroughly enjoyed it all over again - especially the Van Gogh bit and your kissing thoughts transitioning to 'reminders' from your father LOL