NO LIP-LOCKING IN BOMBAY.....

India is a strange country. It’s famous for diaper wearing Mahatma Gandhi, beautiful Temples, and Cattle roaming free in the streets because they are considered sacred unlike the poor untouchables…who most Indians won’t touch with a ten-foot Pole…named Ivan. India has a strict caste system which makes the pre-civil war south look downright liberal. Most Indians look and sound like Sabu to me. If you don’t know who Sabu was – start watching old movies.

India's famous for its hot food especially Curry which can blow a hole through the top of your head. It’s also famous for its women who wear colorful dots on their foreheads. Many Americas wonder why the women wear these dots and the answer is that most Indian women are very homely….looking like something you might find swimming in an aquarium. From the day they are born, these females are regularly told by men – fathers, brothers, boyfriends and husbands…that they are ugly as sin. The men keep tapping them on their foreheads saying things like, “You are uglier than cow taking a dump.” This constant tapping of the forehead causes those dots.

In the past few years India has become a very wealthy country because of outsourcing of jobs from America, Britain, France and Germany. Today, if you call an 800-number trying to get your credit card company, or a reservation on an airline or hotel there’s a good chance you will be talking to someone living in Bombay or New Delhi. India’s population is very educated and since wages are a lot lower than large western countries – most of the largest corporations have outsourced these jobs to India.

The latest flap over India occurred the other day when an Israeli couple was fined 1,000 rupees after an Indian court found them guilty of obscenity for kissing during their marriage ceremony in a Hindu temple. The couple had decided to have a traditional Hindu marriage while visiting Pushkar town in the temple-studded desert state of Rajasthan. The obvious question is why would any Israeli couple get married in a Hindu temple? I guess no Rabbi was available or a Kosher catering company. You can’t find a good plate of curry tzimmis in all of India.

The Israeli bride and groom infuriated the priest as they started to kiss and embrace while he was chanting vedic hymns. The priest, along with other Hindu holy men, complained to police, who filed charges against the couple. The court in Pushkar gave its guilty verdict. There was no Judge Judy to appeal to. Obviously the “hot to trot” Israeli couple didn’t know the customs and outraged the town’s religious leaders. “We will not tolerate any cultural pollution of this sort,” Ladoo Ram Sharma, president of an organization of Hindu priests in Pushkar said. I guess India hasn’t culturally progressed much since independence and if kissing is a punishable offense – imagine what they’d do to anyone giving a hickey?

Pushkar has a famous temple dedicated to Brahma – the Hindu god of creation – and is popular with foreign tourists who come for its desert ambience, camel safaris and annual camel races. Most Indian women don’t have to worry about being kissed since they look worse than the camels.

India has tough obscenity laws and kissing in public is frowned upon in the largely conservative country. The Israeli couple’s defense was that like most Jewish marriages they’d probably never kiss again after the ceremony.

I don’t know about you but next time I call an 800-number I’m going to make “kissing-face” sounds to the operator.