Choomachooma

Now desis can take credit for inventing the kiss! One would think this form of communication, much frowned on by Indian society and the Indian film censor board, is a Western creation, but that’s not so. Joshua Foer writes in the New York Times that Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University “traced the first recorded kiss back to India, somewhere around 1500 B.C., when early Vedic scriptures start to mention people “sniffing” with their mouths, and later texts describe lovers “setting mouth to mouth.” From there, he hypothesizes, the kiss spread westward when Alexander the Great conquered the Punjab in 326 B.C.”

After teaching the world to smooch, how come our lips are sealed and kissing is such an underground activity in apna desh?