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Dating in Delhi when you're poor

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Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#71

Post by Invictus0 »

webmobdev wrote: post #27

Something I dislike about the whole "dating" thing (a very US cultural influence due to their media) is that what is supposed to be a normal socialising event between too people, is made into a consumerist ritual . So much that two couples walking in a park or hanging with their friends is not really a "date" or you being cheapskate as, apparently, romance without money is no longer romance.

This is not just a "walk in the park" date. I have seen these parks myself, in Delhi and in Mumbai--there are literally dozens of couples kissing and having sex in the dark in these tiny, tiny parks, hardly 30 feet between couples. It is a date of last resort in a gossip-heavy culture--there is no privacy, and young people are shamed for wanting to experience love, especially if it's with the "wrong" person.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#72

Post by ImprobableTruth »

chrisseaton wrote: post #63
em-bee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Upper class starting at around 100k would give America an upper class of around a third of the population! I guess we're meaning entirely different things since an upper class of a third of the population seems like a contradiction in terms to me!

I assume they're talking about 100k individual income as opposed to household income?

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#73

Post by sudosysgen »

chrisco255 wrote: post #41
webmobdev wrote: post #27

Something I dislike about the whole "dating" thing (a very US cultural influence due to their media) is that what is supposed to be a normal socialising event between too people, is made into a consumerist ritual . So much that two couples walking in a park or hanging with their friends is not really a "date" or you being cheapskate as, apparently, romance without money is no longer romance.

I've never made this distinction in my head.

Me neither, but I do have friends that did!

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#74

Post by nodejs_rulez_1 »

farmerstan wrote: post #66

I thought Indians largely looked down on dating, although maybe the times have changed in the last 10 years? I have many close Indian friends and they are all married via arranged marriage. I’m pretty sure their American-born children will not marry via arranged marriage though and they have all come to grips with that. I remember talking with one of my friends about arranged marriage and she laughed in my face when…

> She said compatibility was the most important thing, not love, which I found very interesting.

Calmly explain to her that the best thing to do is to spend teens and 20s "finding yourself" and "experimenting" and "having fun" as a "free spirit" then to "settle down" in your 30s when you are "ready" and "know what you want".

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#75

Post by strken »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #46
jimbob21 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually read that comment about Toronto? He immediately prefaces it by saying it isn't in the same realm, but can relate because he's poor in his area as well. I don't think that YOU realize that it is okay to relate to common feelings without being the most of that thing. The guy from Toronto doesn't have to be the most poor person in the most poor area in order to understand their feelings and talk about h…

He is not gatekeeping being poor. He is pointing out that being poor in Toronto is not the same as being poor in Delhi. You are trying to lump two things together into a category that are not even remotely comparable.

Why was he pointing that out? It wasn't in question: everyone involved in this conversation knows how poor Delhi is on a factual level, since it's literally in the article we all read. Half the Toronto post wasn't even about poverty, it was about how the author would go on dates to far away parts of the city so his family wouldn't find out he was gay.

Why wouldn't they be comparable? They can be compared easily. You're comparing them right now.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#76

Post by commandlinefan »

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 read it the same way you did.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#77

Post by aerovistae »

justicezyx wrote: post #67
cheriot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

Note that Indian people are suffering way more than than their western counterparts. The homeless in US lives a considerably better life than Indian homeless. This is not justifying one or the other. But if one always start with humanity as one's subject of discussion, than there probably is no meaningful progress to be made at all.

Can you explain how it's better in the US? Seems to me like it's pretty hard to get worse than sleeping on the pavement and eating out of the trash.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#78

Post by verall »

em-bee wrote: post #56
chrisseaton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The upper class doesn't need to work for their money. Of course the line draws different in every location, but the difference between the upper-middle class lawyer and the upper-class lawyer is that the upper-class lawyer could quit and still pass this privelege onto their children.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#79

Post by jimbob45 »

cheriot wrote: post #57
ajmurmann wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, b…

It’s not about building more housing. There is enough housing to house everyone in the US and then some.

Homelessness is not just about finding/funding a home. You need food and transportation for a job. If the solution were as simple as throwing money at the homeless, California would have long ago solved their homelessness issue.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#80

Post by sombremesa »

derefr wrote: post #61
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not gatekeeping being poor. He is pointing out that being poor in Toronto is not the same as being poor in Delhi. You are trying to lump two things together into a category that are not even remotely comparable.

There are two distinct experiences being discussed here: the experience of living in absolute poverty; and the experience of being down-and-out in a city you can't afford the cost-of-living of (i.e. "relative" poverty — the kind you could in theory get away from by "moving somewhere cheaper", but where for various reasons people don't tend to do that.) Both the poor person in Toronto and the poor person in Delhi are…

> But the homeless person in Delhi will still commisserate with the homeless person in Toronto

Perhaps, but it's worth pointing out that these experiences are qualitatively different.

In India, being poor (especially if you're a certain caste) is tantamount to being non-human. You can be jailed, raped, mistreated, killed without consequence. Even the middle class is afforded little human dignity, the underclass have no real hope. The homeless in Toronto can still get some government services without bribery.

On top of that, there's the whole matter of caste which won't go away even if you win the lottery.

Someone else here is saying that dating poor in Switzerland is the same as in Delhi...that comes across as unbelievably tone deaf. Perhaps they missed the part in TFA where this couple has to date far away from the home. You can get beaten up or killed for being seen with the "wrong person" (in this case same gotra), and it does happen - quite often.

So it's not as simple as absolute and relative poverty in my opinion (though that is a good thought and is definitely part of it).

Risking another bad analogy, I would perhaps compare it to being the lowest class of worker in a Walmart versus being at the bottom of the org chart in Netflix. You can both commiserate on how bad your managers are, but your lived experiences are not remotely the same.

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