A slow and quiet, in-your-face revolution is on

A happy spectre is haunting India - the happy spectre of PDA, or public display of affection. Spearheaded by young men and women from the middle-middle and lower-middle classes, PDA is slowly but surely moving out of the underground - literally, in the sense of less restrained couples taking Metro rides - up to the surface in public spaces, malls, promenades, neighbourhoods....

By extension, young Indians moving up the happy hormonal display chain - from just holding hands to embracing, cuddling, snuggling, and face-nuzzling - are becoming less and less objectionable in a country that remains overwhelmingly conservative, at least when it comes to matters of heart and hormones - and hypocrisy. Even I, who till not so long ago, would mumble Grinch-like, 'Get a room', have stopped trying to catch from the corner of my eye a canoodling couple standing next to me travelling from Esplanade to Tollygunge on the Kolkata Metro. The same holds true for many a journey from Rajiv Chowk to Mayur Vihar Phase 1 on the Delhi Metro where I now just wonder how things would have been were I 30 years younger.

Going, going, though not yet gone are the days when couples would be able to 'close out the world' and be physically intimate in public view only by finding shadowy silhouette-making spots on the seafront, behind shrubberies and trees, inside cinemas... When was the last time you read one of those once-regular news reports about the police popping up on couples and then giving the poor dearies a solid sanskari dressing down? Even the self-anointed purveyors and upholders of public morality seem to be letting their guards down and returning to their Amazon Prime.

PDA is culture specific. There is likely to be more disbelief among, say, Dutch or German visitors when they chance upon the not-too-unfamiliar sight of two Delhi cops in uniform passing by holding hands - sometimes by their pinkies - than among us upon seeing a tight embrace outside India Gate. Similarly, younger people touching the feet of elders - also, standard political-social behaviour among politicians - in pranaam will raise brows, even hackles, not just in a westerner, but in a westernised Indian. No one else.

But affection and its various shades have their corresponding shades of display. The PDA I'm talking about here isn't of the familial or filial variety, but of the amorous, erotic kind. And it is here that India's urban spaces are undergoing a quiet, caressing, bill-and-cooing change because the culture of 'love-showing' itself is becoming more globalised than ever before.

Non-English-speaking Indian couples even in small towns have been exchanging the universal tri-syllabic password of love, 'I love you' to confirm and reassure for years now. The term of endearment itself is no longer 'English' as it was when Amitabh and Parveen Babi were explaining a million years ago in the song from Khud-Daar, 'Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain I Love You'.

Sure, you're very, very unlikely to catch couples snogging away at Khan Market as you'll be bound to at Covent Garden or in Berlin's Tiergarten. But rituals vary, and PDA is both inward- and outward-facing - a showcasing of love to satisfy oneself and one's partner, as well as a devil-may-care display to anyone outside this circle of two who cares to dekho.

PDA is like a manuscript turned into a publication for public consumption. It doesn't take away the fact that it exists even if no one 'reads' it. But as societies go, there is a correlation between the acceptance - even celebration - of PDA and how free its people are from doing something, anything, that doesn't harm anyone in anyway. Ask a couple in Paris and in Tehran, and they will know.

This is an aspect of India's improving 'ease of doing business' hardly commented on. And frankly, commentaries may do more damage to the slow but sure proliferation of little displays of love than keeping tactfully, even prudishly mum about it. Conspicuous displays of love, like conspicuous consumption, is, indeed, being seen by more and more Indians as 'world-class' behaviour. Embrace it. And him/her in full public display.