Kissing Not Required

In a recent interview, Saif Ali Khan, expressed his lack of enthusiasm for on-screen kissing. While the Bollywood heartthrob has locked lips with his female co-stars in past flicks like “Hum Tum” and “Salaam Namaste”, he’s disinclined to continue the practice since his marriage to Kareena Kapoor as it “doesn’t suit us.”

He explains, “I would not like to kiss onscreen because I think it’s not required. It’s not done well enough. And there are few times onscreen that a kiss is warranted and when it is, it should be done in a way that it means everything. But our culture is about not kissing in public.”

While he may have a point based on current South Asian cultural norms, lip to lip action has grown increasingly common on the Bollywood big screen. Gone are the days of the artfully cascading locks of hair and actors hiding behind trees to cover up overt displays of affection.

Of course, the steamiest onscreen lip-smack to date has been between two men. Randeep Hooda and Saqib Saleem’s tortured kissing scene in this year’s anthology film Bombay Talkies was a sizzler and caused quite an uproar in Bollwood press.

Saqib describes Karan Johar’s directing ingenuity: “I can tell you, Randeep and I were very awkward doing it. Karan somehow got it out of us in one take. And that awkwardness was just fine because that’s how Karan wanted it to be between our characters.”