The pink bubbly was for midnight hour which was smooch hour. Love in the time of Shiv Sena is no love. According to the Hindu cartoonist and his Sainiks who have appointed themselves as the guardians of Indian culture, everything is okay, provided it is done behind closed doors. We are grateful for the permission, and mindful of the admonition. For a society as ostentatious as ours, this rebuke against expression sounds rather odd.
Indian society is one of the most pageant-obsessed of all.
Our festivals cannot be replete without a hundred rituals accompanied to the general clamour of conches and clarinets, while our weddings are nasueously etalegeous, and noisy. Our houses, from the smallest chattel to the largest mansion, strives to be noticed. Our automobiles scream to make existentialist statements, with musical horns and bizarre side-fittings with faux puppy fur on suburban dashboards and horsepower stickers on doors. We cannot watch television without hearing it a block away, and we clear out throats in public slightly louder than we blow our nose. It is the noise India makes which is heard louder than the statements its civilisation has been trying to imply.