Be reasonable, please!

A recent incident in Chennai over teenagers and young adults kissing and hugging, and such photos being splayed all over the newspapers was shocking and disturbing, to say the least. And the responses even more.
Indian society has always been non-committal about sex education, and has been rather coy about inter-gender relations prior to marriage. Of course, this coyness was often a mask for much deep rooted hypocrisy. And that such hypocrisy emerges out of the coyest societies isn't unusual. After all, the most restricted souls most desire of even the most depraved of excitements. But for the sake of maintaining a sort of holier-than-thou posture, such societies choose to don a "conservative" outlook. They frown on any deviations from their traditions, their customs, and their beliefs. So, the general uproar about the couples kissing, hugging, and fondling each other was really expected.
Not that I am supporting the uproar, but really, the so-called miscreants should really have done whatever they were doing then in more private confines. Admitted, they being citizens of a free India are permitted the freedoms of expression, but surely this freedom cannot be presumed to be absolute. Maybe in this particular case, there weren't families i.e. children around to witness their frolicking; however there is emerging a general tendency to brazenly ignore societal concerns on morality and general good social behaviour in public places.

But what I found even more disgusting was the tendency of the print media to splay the pictures of these blokes on the front page, as if encouraging people to see their brazen behaviour, and maybe even emulate it. Admitted, of late the print media has considerably lowered its standards, especially to counter the influence of the television news media, but surely, one could have expected better behaviour from individuals calling themselves the vanguards of democracy, as the guardians of the reader.

There is also a very heated debate on whether or not practices such as a live-in relationship should be encouraged. A recent televised discussion on this listed one of the live-in arrangement's advantages as that any one of the partners could easily leave the other without having to resort to messy legal procedures should he/she find himself/herself unwilling to accept the other partner's style of living. And I watched amazed. For me, such a relationship is a farce, one that should never be termed a relationship in the first place, because it is based not on trust or on love, but on a sort of uneasy compromise to be broken as and when one feels.

No relationship can be deemed pure and unblemished unless it is based on trust and love. If you choose to hide details of your life from the ones whom you claim to love, then you sadly do not love them, you merely tolerate them. Hurting those who love you is the greatest sin imaginable, and cannot be washed away for all eternity. But these kids simply have abnegated the feelings of shame, and responsibility to a greater being than themselves - their family.

This incident and many more like this brings to fore the confusion of the so-called westernized populace of the urban classes, who whilst insisting on their rights to privacy, persist in doing all sorts of depraved displays of affection in public. Someone ought to wring their ears and yell in them, "Care to be reasonable, pal?"