i'm a 1 percenter

in SOMETHING... 

https://www.storypick.com/india-lowest-divorce-rate-study-debate 

But quite shockingly, a study submitted by Unified Lawyers reveals that India has the lowest divorce rate in the world. Only 1% of Indian marriages end in divorce. 

That seems really low, although it may be a technicality. Many Indian couples may simply have not formalized the separation.

Anyway, not to steal your thunder on the 1% snobbery. Ok j/k. Hope 2020 is a good year for you. On a different note, I think we should revive this forum... let’s get going with your stories T- dub!

Kris wrote:That seems really low, although it may be a technicality. Many Indian couples may simply have not formalized the separation.

Anyway, not to steal your thunder on the 1% snobbery. Ok j/k. Hope 2020 is a good year for you. On a different note, I think we should revive this forum... let’s get going with your stories T- dub!

haha... thanks and hope 2020 is a good year for you too! here's to 2020 and the revival of this board. may the bishes come back (not) ... lol. but this is an election year, so let's see. One good thing my vacation did was that i got disconnected from all the news here, and when i came back, that continued. great for my peace of mind. i still watch the late night clips but with a certain detachment. and i have accepted that Trump will win again, so, bleh (where's the throw up emoji)

TW,

The idea is to not get caught up in the swirl around you. Focus on your life, be selfish to some extent. Enjoy life. Were you in India? Did Ramesh connect with you? Did he say “you are looking nice etc..”. Do tell!

Kris wrote:TW,

The idea is to not get caught up in the swirl around you. Focus on your life, be selfish to some extent. Enjoy life. Were you in India? Did Ramesh connect with you? Did he say “you are looking nice etc..”. Do tell!

i had one of the weirdest india (hometown) trip this time. 

first of all, before i was to reach there, my friend died. so that set the mood. once we reached there, the first duty was to go for condolences. xh and i went together coz her husband was his classmate and in general we all were from the village. my brother dropped us there, and we walked back home, crossing a very busy road holding hands, with me thinking the next morning's headline will be - 'they died in a road accident after coming from a shok sabha'. anyhoos, we happened to meet some of the friends there, which was a pretty odd way to catch up with people, some of whom we had not seen in years. like, in a very sad tone i am asking a friend's brother - 'how is she, she has disappeared from everywhere, give her my hello'. 

then some friends decided to meet coz quite a few out-of-towners were there, but we had to keep it hush-hush so that a social media queen doesn't get to hear of it and flash pictures of us all over, like 5 days after a close friend dies. my bff told me that it's at the restaurant a friend owns from 12-2. So my other bff picked me up and we got there at 12:30, to a vacant restaurant. we didn't care because this was the only time i was gonna get to catch up with her, so we soon got lost in our talks. the first bff came at 1. We continued chatting, wondering where all were, not bothering to even call the friend whose restaurant it was. Finally at 1:30 bff called the friend who had organized this whole thing. Turns out the time was 2-4! and i had to go to a movie at 3. so friends began trickling in around 2:30 and bam, it's time for me to leave at 3 (considering previews there go for 20+ minutes, and the theatre was close by). But atleast i could touch hands with all. 

then we did what i call, 'a bank tourism'. xh and i have been trying to close an NRI account for years and always get caught up in bureaucracy, and are always 'that-one-document' short. so everyday, we would be sitting at the bank, not kidding for 4-6 hours. And no, our work didn't get done. But in the process, we got to eat awesome food at the cafe across the street, plus they had much better bathrooms. 

and then i got cold/flu there, and major stomach issues. 

my bff would come at breakfast time for a walk and breakfast in the village, so that was good. We had a lot of family outings this time, coz XH's family is huge. But in one of the last dinners, a couple of friends asked me if i want to meet for late night coffee. my sister's aunt-in-law was like - 'yeah go, chill with your friends, you got only 1 day left here', so i just told my bro-sis and rushed out coz they got there to pick me up. Instead of coffee though, we made a last minute decision and got drunk instead, and that was probably the chillest moment of my trip. Next morning though, there were a couple of pissed off people, including mom and xh. 

in previous trips i would always run into XB in the village, mostly unplanned. but this time i barely went there in times when he's there. We kept making plans to time it to be there together, but didn't happen. Coz i also have demanding kids who wanted me to take them around everywhere. Plus XH kept requesting me to meet this relative or that. My loss, coz i really wanted to meet his new 'girl friend', basically she's just a friend of opposite gender lol, but he talks about her a lot, and they are very close and he wanted us to meet. 

i had to point blank refuse a lot of local friends from college and otherwise, simply coz i wasn't well and the bank consumed most of our trip. funny thing is, my bro and mom were like - why are you so hung over just for 20,000. and i am like - ahem, it's 20,000 DOLLARS, and then suddenly they were in on my battle lol. 

ramesh was some online person from FB. talking of FB messenger, i once got a message from some random dude who did my face reading based on my profile, and he surprisingly was correct, but i never bothered replying back.

The bank experience is a nightmare. I spend close to half my trip each time navigating through the bureaucracy. They harassed me about even getting paid off on a mortgage loan. Of late, I am getting calls from a Relationship Manager at ICICI about some investment scheme. I got bamboozled a few years ago on two life insurance policies which have some cash out feature, but a few years down the road. I hope I don’t lose track of this mentally by then.

Your ex b’s story is getting curiouser and curiouser. He is still in the gf phase? Maybe he never got over you.
. So Ramesh is a face reader? Maybe he was trying to monetize it. Stalk women on the internet, convert that into a business opportunity by reading their face and charge them for it. Kind of a sly Prem Jyotish, except the jyotish man didn’t feign romance. You are better off without Ramesh. Remember you have ex b’s who are pining for you .. holding out hope well into their forties.  Happy MLK day

Kris wrote:Your ex b’s story is getting curiouser and curiouser. He is still in the gf phase? Maybe he never got over you.
. 

haha yeah he's an interesting guy. not sure about him never getting over me, but he manages to find women who 'dote over him' lol. so he kept on talking about this new 'girl friend', and i asked if it's physical too, and he said nope, nothing physical, so i am like, 'then how is she your girlfriend'. so in return i got to hear a whole spiel about how i have a corrupted mind now that i live in america, and that the only relationships i understand has to be sexual in nature, and that i no longer understand or believe in emotional connections, or how 'truly romantic' small town indian affairs are with their platonic stuff. and i am like 'dude please you are 48, not 16' . so from next point onwards, he calls her his gf, but quickly corrects it to 'friend'.  

but he may have a point. i don't understand 'affairs' that don't involve people meeting each other. especially cyber affairs. i understand long distance, coz in those, atleast the couple were together at some point, but how can you be in true deep love with someone you have never met. it's a make-believe where you are spinning an imaginary web for yourself. for me it has to be in flesh before i feel anything, and even then, many times i don't. having said that, maybe i am some lower being who doesn't get higher human emotions maybe... whatever it is, not gonna change at this age.

You should have told him, ‘at 48, I wouldn’t buy green bananas!’. Hahaha.. I think that is a George Burns joke.
I thought his gf was in the ‘village’ not someone online. Anyway, to each his own. This bf/gf business in the forties sounds funny, but I guess India is changing. A few years ago, I got a call from a former colleague who wanted to have lunch. He was 50 at that time and asked me if he was doing the right thing by proposing to his gf. The discomfort was not with her, but the fear he may jumping into marriage hastily. I still don’t know why I was a sounding board fir this. Long story short.. it lasted a few years and hit the skids. He is now in a relationship with an Asian gal who apparently is pushing for a commitment. Pretty cool guy, east Coast family, prep school background, but relationships don’t seem to work out.

oh no no... she's a villager, that's why my opp to meet her. i just went off the tangent on online love. 

some people are just not meant for a relationship. in delhi recently, we had the pressure to spend 2400 rupees in one hour, so i took a 500 rupees tarot reading. i was allowed 4 questions. so the first i asked was about health. so she goes - 'tell me ur marital status, coz i am seeing u were under certain planet, which would have either caused you a divorce or really bad health, so it looks like u got divorced'. and then she said that whatever bad health i experience is out of anxiety and that i am otherwise fine. then she went on to say that it's good i didn't commit into any new relationship in that period coz i (meaning my planets) would attract the same bs everytime when the man reverses the moment i commit. and finally she said she doesn't see a remarriage for me, and my cards tell her that i am not looking for one either. 

what a grand way to make me feel good about my divorce lol, coz i mean, the alternative was to be morbidly ill... when i came out and told xh that she doesn't see remarriage in my cards, he gave such a big smile lol.

TW,

I don’t know about re-marriage but I see much money being spent on tarot card/face/ tea leaf readers, palmists etc in your future.
I remember a horoscopologist, who incidentally had come to this country to do post doc work in biochemistry, telling me 25 would be a horrible time for me. This was unsolicited counsel when he found out my birth date. I turned to his room mate and said this whole thing was gibberish which ticked him off. By the way, it turned to be one of the best years of my life all the way around.

haha nah i don't believe in it. it's more for entertainment. actually, i like doing reverse psychology, coz such people are astute body language readers, so i weigh-in anything that say and wonder what was it about me that gave it away. And then i rate them more on their observational skills more than anything else. And yet, some of them do surprise me by their accuracy.

You may be right about the body language cues. There used to be a psychic friends nerwork show with Dionne Warwick that got cancelled. I remember a comedian quipping “ if they were so good, how come they didn’t see their demise coming?”. I actually have the same type of doubt about many money managers who claim they can make you rich.

I am starting to read up on Charvakas. The philosophy essentially dismisses any external agency and opines that you should live life in the here and now and there is nothing beyond all this. It dismisses other philosophical types as weaklings and fools who waste their time.  I am starting to like these guys . It is impressive that India accommodated these views even way back when.