Relationships

I am not sure why, but many people have called their girlfriends/boyfriends to WIMWI during Confluence. Till about 18 months ago, I knew almost no one who was going steady with someone. Obviously my knowledge was limited by my reluctance to ask any such personal questions to my friends. In the last year of college, some couples did become apparent. Still it is likely that in my class of 70, there were no more than 7-8 persons who were involved with anyone.

Soon after coming here, I realized that a really high proportion of the people have or have had a girlfriend/boyfriend. I would guess that atleast 20-25 out of my class of 80 are in varying stages of courtship, including some who will marry soon after graduation.

More significant than the number is the nature of the relationships. Or perhaps the numbers are important. In DJ, every couple was a rarity, something to be celebrated or at least strongly gossiped about. Here things are taken more matter-of-factly. The age factor plays a major role of course. With many people here being 23 or older, relationships have often already lasted for 2 or more years. So the novelty factor (for onlookers too, who have also now seen other couples) wears off, I guess.

Still this was one area where I did receive a culture shock (to some extent - after all my sister did marry someone she fell in love with in her first year of junior college). In DJ, I believed that dating, etc were basically things one only saw on television shows and films. Perhaps that was because of my and my friends' socio-economic background. Or because I never asked my friends such questions, my perceptions were wrongly informed. I came here and discovered a whole new facet of Indian society.