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When the father becomes the Groom
And then it happened! On the corner of his favourite Tamil dailypage, inside this small rectangle space was a banner proudlyproclaiming... "Find your life partner." "Get married now!!" Itwas an Internet matrimonial site ad. More so, an Indianmatrimonial portal ad!!!Now, Mr. Paul has 2 sons, both in their late 20's, marriageableage, according to most Indian p...
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arents. Paul is familiar withnewspaper ads. He's been reading them for some time now and alsohas posted some ads for his sons. What could be different withan Internet ad?So, Mr. Paul clicks on the Internet ad. He is lead to a pagewhere the details are requested. Mr. Paul fills in the detailsand submits it. He is given an ID. Mr. Paul has to login to theaccount and check and update his account. So far so good.A few days later, Paul as usual goes out for work and his wifeis at home cooking, the phone rings and she picks it up. A smallvoice cracks up in the phone saying, " Is this Mr. Paul's house?We are friends of Ms. Aarti, She is 55, and divorced and we arelooking for a suitable person for her. We are interested in hisprofile. Can we come and meet Mr. Paul?" The wife obviously isspeechless, quite furious and doesn't know what to do. And itdidn't stop with one call. Th...
...ere were a few more on the sameday, enough to make her really give a hard & serious look at thesituation.Mr. Paul comes in from work to a fuming welcome from his wife.He is totally freaked out when his wife explains to him whathappened. Then Paul explains that he had provided his detailsinstead of his son's details in the Internet site quiteignorantly in the perception that this was similar to theNewspaper ad.The story ends with Mr. Paul contacting the support team of thematrimonial portal and getting help with deleting his profile.It's sad that the search for a life partner for his son left hismarriage in a soup.The point is that, the Internet and other conventional mediumslike newspapers work in completely different ways. Newspaper adsare mostly, what we can term as parent - centric wherein, theperson posting the ad is more often the parent, relative or afriend to whom the ad is posted for. Whereas in the Internet,the onus is on the person who is actually looking out.It would be quite a while before people get accustomed to howthings work via the Internet. Until then, there will be someclicks that actually break a few marriages rather than makethem....
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