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Dating in Delhi when you're poor

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Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#171

Post by rocknor »

prox wrote: post #118
jp42 wrote: post #50

Whenever there is comparison between something in India and west, almost always its not apples to apples. There are 1.3 billion people, and very wide range of social & economic spectrum, which inherently makes comparison very difficult. for the sake of example - for "X", you will find many many Indians spending vastly more than western people, at the same time you will find millions of Indians who could not even drea…

An Indian man once told me religion is the only unifying part of India. That if that didn’t exist, India would fall apart. Can’t tell of course if that is true.

Makes no sense. Religion is rapidly declining yet the citizens are getting more patriotic and developing a stronger common identity. Things like culture/tradition/language/food are much more important than religion for unification. This applies everywhere in the world.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#172

Post by rocknor »

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…

I don't think you know what "arranged marriage" really means.

Previously it used to be that your parents would choose your partner for you and you didn't have a choice (well this was true everywhere in the world). This still happens in rural and lesser urbanized areas, but things are changing pretty fast. In urban areas, arranged marriage is basically Tinder with parents - but the goal is to optimize for long-term happiness. Also it's not like the partners never meet each other before marrying - it's usually at least a few meets to decide if they are compatible. If not, you just move on to the next family in the list. The idea is that compatibility is more important. If you're compatible, "love" will happen eventually.

It's true that a few meets are not usually enough to judge compatibility, which is why arranged marriages are on their way out and will eventually die out.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#173

Post by wombatmobile »

alisonkisk wrote: post #149
DoreenMichele wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a former military wife. Just trying to explain how military life is different to other Americans was insanely hard. I lived in the same country. I used the same currency. I spoke the same language. Yet my life was not like that of civilians I knew and their underlying assumptions and mine that informed our decisions just did not match up to such a degree that I eventually stopped trying to explain my life choices…

It's not possible to make people understand. You can try it understand others, and some others can try to understand you, but you can't make someone's open their mind if they don't want to.

To help people understand something they've never experienced, stay within their own frame of reference. That's all they've got to work with, because they don't know what they haven't experienced.

To explain poverty to a middle class Californian, frame it in culture terms that are familiar, but which still reach the same class of emotional experience you want them to understand.

e.g.

Have you ever gone shopping at The Gap for jeans with a bunch of pals, and they take forever to decide which 12 pairs of jeans they're going to get, but you only take like 20 minutes because you can only afford 4 pairs? You know how that feels?

They'll catch on.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#174

Post by jeremiahlewis »

s5300 wrote: post #151
908B64B197 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The housekeeper, being paid pretty well, had her own housekeeper so she could have time for all these housekeeping gigs. Sounds like her housekeeper should get better customers.

She may be fair skinned, her housekeeper may be dark skinned. In India, something as simple as that can determine how much you may make as a housekeeper. Sucks, right?

> She may be fair skinned, her housekeeper may be dark skinned. In India, something as simple as that can determine how much you may make as a housekeeper. Sucks, right?

In the USA, something as simple as skin color can determine whether you get shot by the cops or helped to assail the capitol. Sucks, right?

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#175

Post by chakkepolja »

jessaustin wrote: post #5

Twelve years after they started dating, they married. The family disapproved. Surender’s grandmother and Preeti’s mother were from the same “gotra,” or clan. Hindu clans prohibit marriage within the descendants of an unbroken male line. The Wiki page on "gotra" suggests they "only" have to go back seven generations (I don't know any of my ancestors beyond five generations and the father of one of my great-grandfather…

Gotra is limited to only certain number of paternal lineages. In South India I see only tracking of one paternal lineage (generally consisting of 2-3 r'shis).

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#176

Post by chakkepolja »

valarauko wrote: post #131
jessaustin wrote: post #5

Twelve years after they started dating, they married. The family disapproved. Surender’s grandmother and Preeti’s mother were from the same “gotra,” or clan. Hindu clans prohibit marriage within the descendants of an unbroken male line. The Wiki page on "gotra" suggests they "only" have to go back seven generations (I don't know any of my ancestors beyond five generations and the father of one of my great-grandfather…

In practice, there really are several dozen gotras (at least among the Brahmins), if not hundreds. The traditional practice was for Brahmins to declare their exact line of descent alongside the gotra, by naming five noteworthy ancestors (pravara rishis), starting from the top level saptarishi ancestor gotra(one of seven). Some of the saptarishis famously didn't get along, and their descendants are considered incompat…

> In practice, there really are several dozen gotras (at least among the Brahmins), if not hundreds.

> Some of the saptarishis famously didn't get along, and their descendants are considered incompatible matches for marriage.

I suppose this is different in Southern clans.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#177

Post by euske »

_y5hn wrote: post #104
sombremesa wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what the solution is for trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. I think that's just it: trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. That's something I tried with the GP here, but I could probably write up an article to be linked to in such discussions. > metrics like "How many meals per day do you get?" and "What kind of shelter do you have?" I think this is a good thought, a…

India has lots of villages, slums and people in between having very poor material standards compared to Western countries. But people are also much more interconnected, rely on each other and find ways to get by. So to get that culture, you have to spend at least 6 months and really get to know what family values are, and how things tend to work out. It's very different than the lonely individualist countries. Many I…

Personally, that's the biggest lesson that I got from traveling in India. There's no question that people's living standard needs to be improved there, but I saw something that's lacking in a developed country (especially in the country I live): mutual help, or the "love your neighbor" mindset. I hope that tradition last long.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#178

Post by MisterSandman »

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…

As an Indian immigrant now living in Toronto, this comment comes off a bit tone deaf. I don't mean to poor-shame you, but you can not possibly compare yourself to a poor person in India. The difference in the divide is so massive to the point where it's not comparable.

McDonalds is a luxury for most people, even in Toronto. It's just cheaper than most other restaurants, and people don't/can't care about how it impacts their finances. Looking at the amount of food/$ is something most people do, even in Toronto. You aren't special for thinking that.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#179

Post by NotEvil »

winter_blue wrote: post #155
lota-putty wrote: post #126

India hosts 400% of humans of its healthy capacity; 150 people per sq km. What the world sees is the tip of the iceberg. Someone alien to India might have to spend decades to get all the idiosyncrasies that run here. For starters, good portion of sexual harassments/rapes are not reported. Even unnatural deaths go unnoticed or ignored.

> India hosts 400% of humans of its healthy capacity; 150 people per sq km. Urban areas in almost every part of the world have higher density. For example, New York City has 10,716 people per sq km, and Manhattan (a borough of NYC) has a density of 26,821.6 person per sq km. So I'm not sure what you're point here is.

Ever herad of mumbai people to sq.meter or even delhi's. They are much higher than new yorks.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#180

Post by moistly »

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…

> Then I read the first comment on this HN thread, which is directly comparing this to Toronto.

Canada should provide its youth an opportunity to visit a third-world community. Every G7 nation should be giving their citizens that experience. It would make a big difference to how our future plays out.

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