Too much PDA, eh?

‘What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.’ These words were kind of deeply engraved within and kept echoing quite often. Hailing from Bengal has its own perks, the ‘intellectual’ label gets attached to you for cert. Being a journalist, I have to interact with tons of people. And even if a conversation barely lasts for 10 minutes, most of the time it revolves around my roots in Kolkata.

Things were just perfect, till one day, I get a notification from a renowned publication. The headline read something like this, “Couple thrashed mercilessly in Kolkata metro for hugging.” To check the authenticity of the news I googled further. Google gave the gory details of the incident with some hazy clippings of a woman in a green top and some aged people with furious expressions.

Okay, so the entire incident encircled around this ‘PDA’. Now my question is how do we actually analyze, rather narrow down this definition? Is this so-called Public Display of Affection restricted to only couples? What if a father tries to hug her daughter in public, or probably kiss her forehead? Or, how about a situation when a brother tries to put his arms around his sister to protect him from the throng? Would he be beaten up brutally too? Or possibly labeled as destroying our culture we take so much pride in?

The gentleman was perhaps trying to protect his mate (let’s presume here at least) from the common mass, and I see nothing wrong in it. Many a times, we do that for our loved ones. I am sure there are a thousand ways of resolving a matter, and beating isn’t one of them. If the behavior of the couple seemed offensive to the elderly, at least an effort could be made to pacify things in a matured way, rather than beating up.

Source: OU News Bureau

In the west, people stand with placards reading 'Free hugs'.They are offered to people who had a bad day at work, or perhaps experiencing some sort of depression. Well, is that violation of culture too?

The discussion is debatable, undoubtedly. However, under what compelling circumstances can this heinous behavior be justified? Not only us millennials, but I guess even our parents looked up to septuagenarians or octogenarians as a savior. I remember my childhood days when each time I got rebuked, my grandparents stood up for me. They were our shelter, rather they were our bank where we deposited our moments of ecstasy and grief.

Like me, I am sure, all of you would want to wake up to a morning where the headlines would read ‘Bravo, elderly man saves girl from public harassment’ or perhaps ‘This elderly man protests against the ire of public in metro.’ I know change is the only constant in the world, however what’s the harm in succumbing to this little conviction that we have held on for years?