So it's final: they are not going to shake hands in Kathmandu this weekend. They're going to kiss. After getting through the formalities of reviewing decisions, endorsing agendas and forwarding the modalities of the draft declaration, the two are going to smooch in broad daylight at Nagarkot in full view of spy satellites.

Where and when this intimate moment is going to take place is a closely guarded secret, mainly because kissing is still taboo on the Indian screen, and we don't want the subcontinent to be scandalised by this public display of affection on live television, especially since minorities may be watching. It could be potentially destabilising.

Leaders lead by example, and executing a wet Brezhnev-Fidel type bear hug-cum-kiss will need statesmanship, determination and, yes, even stamina. But for our sake and for the sake of future generations of South Asians yet unborn such a gesture may be exactly what we need to lift the taboo on osculation in Bollywood once and for all. For too long, and in movie after movie, we have waited in vain for the singing and chasing of saris in the undergrowth to finally come to its logical conclusion as the hero and heroine duck behind a coniferous trunk, but then the camera inexplicably pans away for a long shot of the scenic Lauterbrunen Valley with Jungfrau in the background.

How many times has Pretty Zinta got drenched while cavorting in a sudden squall with a lover boy named Something Khan (the one who can't seem to move without looking like he is swinging an invisible hula-hoop around his mid-section) and then comes the moment of truth when in all normal human societies a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation sequence would have been called for, but once again at that very instant, we are taken on a tour of the world's most wondrous waterfalls? How can we expect a tension-free subcontinent when we allow Bollywood to indulge in such celluloid brinkmanship?

If done often enough, life imitates art, and that is what we are seeing now: an eruption of pent-up distress of a people who have been let down once too often by squeamish directors who refuse to cut to the chase. The time has come to stop just paying lip-service to the vital subject of on-screen kissing, and to make love not war.

And I don't mean that light peck on the eye-brow, or a head-on collision that is averted at the very last moment by the protagonist veering away from his beloved to redirect his amorous intent at a nearby pine cone. I mean spreading by word of mouth a major epidemic of tongue-lashing across the subcontinent at everyone's earliest convenience, and preferably during the SAARC Summit.

Kathmandu this weekend will be a love-fest like no other, it will take us back to the glory days of Khajuraho when the SAARC Region was the world's Sex Superpower and a Tantric Hot Spot. No other region in world history knew as much about the birds and the bees as our region, not even the birds and the bees. Restoring this heritage and tradition may be the only way to ensure lasting peace. All together now, mwwwaaaaaahh!