Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dating in Delhi when you're poor

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 295 posts

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#51

Post by sombremesa »

jimbob21 wrote: post #48
sombremesa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you actually read that comment about Toronto? I did. Now that you have that information, perhaps you can actually read what I wrote.

Sure. > will reduce the comments I see on the internet that try and compare Delhi/Mumbai squalor to LA You want to reduce comments comparing your city's poorness to another city's poorness. > It's not really enough...you should experience it for yourself You're saying I can't talk about poor areas I know about because they're not as poor as your city. That's gatekeeping being poor, plain as day. But more than that, i…

> You want to reduce comments comparing your city's poorness to another city's poorness.

Not exactly. My bad, perhaps I should've provided an example of the kind of comment I'm talking about. I can't be arsed to go find that comment right now but it's about this video:

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/video-of-man-eating-animal-...

The comment I'm talking about begins with (iirc) "The same thing is happening in LA..."

I don't know what chip you have on your shoulder about this "gatekeeping" but I wish you luck and hope that these things aren't happening in your cities, but of course you have the freedom to say that they are regardless.

I want to add something: I'm just against saying that these things are the same. I'm not saying anything about better or worse or that poverty isn't poverty. Given a choice I might rather be the average homeless person in India as opposed to LA, because at least I wouldn't be as likely to be there due to crippling addictions or mental illness.

That's why I compared it to languages, I don't think one established language is objectively better or worse than another, but direct translations rarely work well.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#52

Post by ummonk »

0_____0 wrote: post #23
em-bee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would not consider someone who can spend $100 on average in an afternoon to be middle class.

If that's $100 per half day, integrated over a month that comes out to monthly expenditures of $6000/mo, which is solidly middle class. Not working class, but certainly within reach of a low/mid level Facebook employee.

A low/mid level Facebook employee is very well off upper middle class, not middle class.

And most such employees still will save most of their income rather than wastefully splurge it on $100 meals.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#53

Post by [deleted] »

ipaddr wrote: post #43
retrac wrote: post #3

It's fascinating how much wider the class gap is there, but so many of the same dynamics sound familiar. Parts of it read as very familiar to me. In Toronto, as a guy from a small town and a working class background. It is also very different for me, of course. Ultimately very few Canadians are "poor", in a sense. I could walk into one of our hospitals on one of those dates and be seen for free. Social assistance pai…

It sounds like you are away from home feel a sense of freedom and got sucked into a downtown lifestyle with no budget. I don't understand why out of towners move downtown and only downtown where local people have moved to other areas of the city because of price and affordability. Somehow downtown feels safe because as a tourist that's what you see. For those moving get out of the downtown core and be able to afford…

[deleted]

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#54

Post by Aunche »

asdff wrote: post #36
azernik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, my family, coming from a recently-developed country, does compare them to slums.

At least in a slum like a favela you have sturdy cinderblock walls, a door that locks, some sort of a latrine situation solved, running water, and electricity, rather than a nylon tent and some debris on the sidewalk with no plumbing.

Plenty of people live in tents in favelas and Indian slums as well.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#55

Post by derefr »

ajmurmann wrote: post #15
sombremesa wrote: post #7

My first thought when reading this was hoping that these types of articles will reduce the comments I see on the internet that try and compare Delhi/Mumbai squalor to LA. Then I read the first comment on this HN thread, which is directly comparing this to Toronto. So either Westerners don't realize that people in these places are making less money in a month than the middle class person can expect to spend in an aver…

> there's also other issues, such as people claiming there's more homeless in LA than in Delhi, not realizing that a lot of effectively homeless people in India aren't classified as such - it'd be like saying you're not homeless in LA if you have a tent or a sleeping bag Sorry, I really cannot avoid going on a tangent because of this. We seem to talk quite differently about informal housing if it's in the US or west…

Slum buildings get addresses, are subject to zoning, have mail delivered to them, etc. It’s basically a matter of government recognition of the slum as something that won’t go away.

Though also, much of that recognition comes from the fact that people in a “homeless camp” don’t tend to think of their living arrangement as permanent or the space they occupy as theirs by right; whereas the people living in a slum, do.

If you live in a camp and you’re offered public housing, you’ll usually take it, because the camp wasn’t where you wanted to be.

If you’re living in a slum, you might hold out for city to just improve the slum, because your dwelling in the slum is your home, for better or for worse.

This is where things like the “container house” movement come into play: that demand is mostly driven by people who think of a slum as their permanent home, who want options for improving their dwelling in that slum into something they can be proud of.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#56

Post by em-bee »

chrisseaton wrote: post #40
em-bee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you have $100 a day of disposable income, you are not going to spend all of it every afternoon. if you do, your actual disposable income is much higher. money for discretionary spending is not the same as disposable income. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/disposableincome.asp defines disposable income as net income, that means after taxes but before living expenses. https://www.investopedia.com/insights/ameri…

Ok... but this still isn't even within orders of magnitude of 'upper class', is it?

EDIT: i used the terms middle class and upper class, when i should have used middle income and upper income.

middle class and middle income are often mixed up. upper class and upper income less so.

old text:

well if the definition of middle class ends at 106k income per year then anything above that must be upper class. the problem here is that obviously upper class has a very wide range which skews the perception of what makes upper class.

of course definitions are just that. the reality is not so clear cut.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#57

Post by cheriot »

ajmurmann wrote: post #15
sombremesa wrote: post #7

My first thought when reading this was hoping that these types of articles will reduce the comments I see on the internet that try and compare Delhi/Mumbai squalor to LA. Then I read the first comment on this HN thread, which is directly comparing this to Toronto. So either Westerners don't realize that people in these places are making less money in a month than the middle class person can expect to spend in an aver…

> there's also other issues, such as people claiming there's more homeless in LA than in Delhi, not realizing that a lot of effectively homeless people in India aren't classified as such - it'd be like saying you're not homeless in LA if you have a tent or a sleeping bag Sorry, I really cannot avoid going on a tangent because of this. We seem to talk quite differently about informal housing if it's in the US or west…

In America, slums and informal housing is destroyed by the city government. See LA's Echo Park for a recent example https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-protesters-clash-sweep-echo...

We have 350m people, 0.5m homeless and lack the political will to build more housing. They are expected to stay out of sight or the municipality will destroy their shelter and often trash their belongings.

Humanity is more cost effective, but doesn't allow us to moralize https://scoop.me/housing-first-finland-homelessness/

/rant

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#58

Post by lostlogin »

gopalv wrote: post #2

Some of this stuff looks very poorly sourced or misunderstood. > Marrying within the “gotra” is one of the primary reasons for recurring “honour killing” of lovers in India I hope not, because it is such a weird upper-caste nit-pick. > they talk about their lives and walk around the park, or eat aloo-chaat or golgappas at a roadside stall That is such a still frame of the middle class life in Delhi from the 90s. My p…

> The 2012 Nirbhaya case

I wasn’t familiar with it but remembered after reading the below link. Warning, it’s horrific.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape_and_mur...

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#59

Post by em-bee »

thebean11 wrote: post #19
sombremesa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about the American middle class in the comparison I make in the GP. I actually have no idea what you're talking about, because I didn't mention any amount of money at all.

> So either Westerners don't realize that people in these places are making less money in a month than the middle class person can expect to spend in an average afternoon You are making a comparison between two sums of money (the amount middle class people spend in an afternoon, and the amount poor people make in a month). Obviously I misinterpreted who the middle class people were, but I doubt I'm the only one. I th…

i am still confused why that makes a difference. to me the comment only makes sense if the middle class in india is more affluent than the middle class in the US.

https://yourstory.com/2018/03/exactly-indias-middle-class-an...

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#60

Post by doit4thebitties »

Dating never requires money. And no guy should be a free dinner dispenser or ATM for commercial activities for someone he doesn't even know.

You can click, talk, walk, dance, and kiss for free... anywhere and everywhere.

Besides, dinner and coffee interview dates are too formal and boring.. zzz.

Post reply on HN