The Manthan held on 9/12/22 was led by Ms Khushi Chodankar, an art student, on the topic “Dating in youngsters“.
She began with the statement that college life shown in Bollywood is very different from real college life. Students in colleges are kept busy all through the day and there are little or no extra curricular activities for students. Students and youth movements are also dead in India. As a result, dating is the only adventure left in their lives.
Peer pressure plays a very important role. Every student is led to believe that if they cannot find a boy/girlfriend, they lack something.
Students have limited pocket money. Most of them do not own a private vehicle. Goa being a small place, they don’t enjoy anonymity. They cannot afford expensive hotels to date. Thus their choices of destinations for dating are very limited.
Goa is conservative place. Dating for marriage needs approval of families at some stage. Families look for partners from the same religion, caste and economic background.
Dating couples get alienated from their friend circles. Breakup is a part of dating as the individuals do not have emotional maturity to sustain a new relationship.
An interesting point was raised by a participant on the word dating itself. He asked if he plans and meets a woman friend over a cup of coffee, why do we call it dating! This word dating connotes many more things than just a meeting of minds.