A week before Valentine's day, 16-year-old Manish was writing out a card to his latest crush when his dad walked in on him. For two whole days Manish had to listen to his father tell him how he never ran after girls and how he never hid anything from his parents and how cable TV was responsible for eroding the morals of today's teenagers.

15-year-old Benita wanted to go to her friend's sleepover. Her mom had said no. The reason was that they were her parents, and a no was to be taken without any questions. After all, they had done the same for their parents.

16-year-old Arjun had a major fight at school, over a girl. His parents were informed. They branded him a fight-picker and a liar and the usual sermon on moral values was dished out to him-garnished, of course.

15-year-old Shefali and her 17-year-old brother Shekharan were watching a movie at home, with their parents. Along came a rather hot scene. And all hell broke loose. Shekharan was given a dressing down for having the temerity to watch that in front of his parents and morally degrading his sister. Shefali was told that she should not watch such movies with her brother.

Sounds familiar? Teenagers are supposed to have lost, or are in the process of losing their morality. Is that really happening or is it just another state of pretence panic hitting us?

No-one wants to be perceived as uptight, especially not teenagers, who see themselves as the leaders of contemporary cool.

Rtvik Sethia, 19, from Bikaner says, "Morals mean different things to different people. Something that is a moral dilemma for me may not be a big deal for you. Basic values like honesty and respect do seem to have vanished, but actually the thing is that most teenagers feel they will be seen as old-fashioned if they are too moralistic. They deliberately go against what they have been taught to show that they are hep, that they have courage. They know when they are crossing conventional moral limits but they will still go ahead and do it just so they don't become social outcasts."

Being rebellious is part of teenage and not sticking to the set moral standards is one of the ways of not conforming. It is one of the ways to feel a part of the whole teenage experience, to fit in and still not want to fit in.

Gaurav Sood, 19, Ludhiana backs this up. He says, "Teenagers feel that going to late-night parties, boozing, smoking and having sex is the way to be 'cool'. All they want to do is be part of the crowd and they will go to any extent to fit in."

"The morals may be the same that our grandparents had and then our parents followed," says 16-year-old Kavi from Delhi, "but the circumstances and situations that we face were not faced by them, this is a different world.

He is right. It's a dog-eat-dog world, there is stiff competition in everything that you want to do. Even if you don't want to, you have to compete to survive and for that if you have to bend the rules a little bit, so be it. You have to go along or at least pretend to go along with what the others around you are doing.

Natasha Prasad, 17, Delhi, says, "Most teenagers are clearly able to identify between right and wrong. It is just that with society becoming less conservative, teenagers are free to experiment with new ideas without having to worry too much about the repercussions. We are a wilder and more reckless bunch than our predecessors, but the basic values like honesty and integrity have remained intact, so why worry."

Indrani Chaudhary, 19, Kolkata, agrees. She says, "We are not losing our morals, we are just changing them to cope with this dynamic world. If we teenagers are clear from within, mere outward changes shouldn't be regarded as degradation of our morals."

Most teenagers feel that parents, in spite of all their good intentions, are the ones to be blamed for moral degradation. If there is any, that is.

18-year-old Meeta Goswami from Delhi says, "It is our parents and the older generation who have forced us to become like this." Manu agrees with this and says, "How can we follow something that we have never seen? Do things that we have never seen our elders doing. It is all their fault."

Shamik Aga, 14, Nasik says, "Nobody has lost any morals. Earlier, too, only 10 percent of the population had any proper morals. At that time, people with bad morals were looked down upon; today they are hero-worshipped. And if you must talk about losing morals, then it is not only teenagers but also adults who are losing them-Hansie Cronje and Azhar are not teenagers."

Neha S also feels that it is the older generation that has shown the path to moral lows. She says, "They have done it and they are to be blamed. The most corrupt are the politicians and most of them are so old. We have learnt it all from them."

There are quite a few teenagers who feel very strongly that teenagers today are gone cases-they have already lost their morals! Like Riaz Singh Ahmed, 16, Bangalore, who says, "We are losing our morals, definitely!" They feel that all this business of trying to fit in without losing sight of moral values is hogwash.

"How is it possible," asks Sachin Saraswat, 17, Bangalore, "that you can pretend to be something you are not and not stop yourself from metamorphing into this other person? How can you be dishonest and still be honest, not respect your elders and still claim to be respectful? Have one-night stands, treat girls like shit and still say that you do it to fit in or survive? It is all a face saving exercise, nothing more."

Anwesha Kar takes a more balanced approach. She says that if morals are about achchhi ghar ki ladkiyan, khandaan ki naak, no guy friends, no sex until marriage and other faltoo bakwaas, then teenagers have lost their morals. She says, "We care a lot about self-respect and treating others with respect, but we also live life by our own standards and it is perfectly fine even if we are not draped in a sari."

"We know what is wrong and what is right. It is like if someone told you not to touch a hot pan, but you still would, just to see whether what you were told is true and whether you can handle it. A few nights out, dating, or watching porn does not make us immoral. We do it for a while and then we come back to what our parents have instilled in us," says Amit Morani.

Experimenting can never be wrong, can it, Pavlov? Anubhuti Rattan says, "Teenagers have become bolder and they are questioning the entire system of morals and yes, they are experimenting. As long as the experiment doesn't end the same disastrous way every time! Parents should not expect teenagers to submit to their moral values. They should give us valid reasons for those values. Teenagers evaluate the morals from their own perspective. We are much smarter and we can judge whether a particular thing will suit us or not. We deserve the liberty to decide what is moral and what is not, so that we can develop as persons with correct morals." Amen to that!

Parents tend to get insecure when a teenager wants to do things his or her way. The immediate reaction is to dissuade them and the only way they know how to do that is to make that an improper thing to do. The End.

So, as Kiran M says, "Just because we are bolder than our parents' generation people feel that we are being immoral. We do the things that our parents wanted to do, too, but they were scared of their parents thinking it was wrong. Since we are not like that, we are accused of losing our morals."

Abhishek Verma points out that every generation has its good and bad points and that this point of losing morals is thrust upon every generation by the previous one. "The older generation says that our generation is, in a lot of respects, better than theirs, but just because we ask them questions or talk back or don't touch feet should not make us immoral. We are the new generation, the new and improved version, so how can we be wrong?"

Agrees Ankit Khandelwal, 18, Delhi, "Just the perspective has changed. Believe you me, all those moral values are safe within me."

16-year-old Deepika Singh, from Mumbai, declares, "They have got to have faith in us. It is just a difference in attitude. I wish somebody could explain to them that we can handle our boy/ girlfriends, surf the Net, go for parties and still get good grades." And faith is the only commodity that parents find very hard to come by where their kids are concerned.

Indrani Chaudhary is of the view that it will take more than faith to tip the balance in the favour of the teenager. "We need to be handled with a lot of patience and understanding, because we refuse to blindly accept anything," she says.

Nishima, 17, is surprised at how parents can even think that their kids are losing their morals when it is the very thing that is hammered into their heads every single day of their lives. She thinks it points towards parents having very little faith in themselves.

Nidhi Banga, 17, Mumbai says, "Losing your morals is like losing your identity. How can we lose our identity before we have found who we are?" Parents have to accept that, like other things, morals are changing, too. "That's evolution," says Rtvik.

"And maybe when we grow up we will agree with our parents and not agree with our children. But for the time being it's not fair to demand that we should follow blindly," concludes Archana Rajindran 16, from Cochin. ¨