Gardiner Harris’s recent piece in The New York Times made me do a double take, not just because of the attachment of the word “bombshell” before Katrina Kaif, which to me is somewhat like using “razor sharp” as the defining adjective for President George W. Bush, but because of the cultural “Rubicon crossing” significance attributed to a scene in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan”:
A pivotal screen kiss reflected the changing romantic landscape here. Kissing scenes were banned by Indian film censors until the 1990s, and Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood heartthrob who is one of the world’s biggest movie stars, has been teasing Indian audiences in dozens of films since then by bringing his lips achingly close to those of his beautiful co-stars. But his lips never touched any of theirs until he kissed the Bollywood bombshell Katrina Kaif in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” which was released in December 2012.
Mr. Khan tried to soften the impact by saying in a published interview that his director made him do it. But the cultural Rubicon had been crossed.
source