When the father becomes the Groom
And then it happened! On the corner of his favourite Tamil daily
page, inside this small rectangle space was a banner proudly
proclaiming... "Find your life partner." "Get married now!!" It
was an Internet matrimonial site ad. More so, an Indian
matrimonial portal ad!!!
Now, Mr. Paul has 2 sons, both in their late 20's, marriageable
age, according to most Indian parents. Paul is familiar with
newspaper ads. He's been reading them for some time now and also
has posted some ads for his sons. What could be different with
an Internet ad?
So, Mr. Paul clicks on the Internet ad. He is lead to a page
where the details are requested. Mr. Paul fills in the details
and submits it. He is given an ID. Mr. Paul has to login to the
account and check and update his account. So far so good.
A few days later, Paul as usual goes out for work and his wife
is at home cooking, the phone rings and she picks it up. A small
voice 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 are
looking for a suitable person for her. We are interested in his
profile. Can we come and meet Mr. Paul?" The wife obviously is
speechless, quite furious and doesn't know what to do. And it
didn't stop with one call. There were a few more on the same
day, enough to make her really give a hard & serious look at the
situation.
Mr. Paul comes in from work to a fuming welcome from his wife.
He is totally freaked out when his wife explains to him what
happened. Then Paul explains that he had provided his details
instead of his son's details in the Internet site quite
ignorantly in the perception that this was similar to the
Newspaper ad.
The story ends with Mr. Paul contacting the support team of the
matrimonial portal and getting help with deleting his profile.
It's sad that the search for a life partner for his son left his
marriage in a soup.
The point is that, the Internet and other conventional mediums
like newspapers work in completely different ways. Newspaper ads
are mostly, what we can term as parent - centric wherein, the
person posting the ad is more often the parent, relative or a
friend 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 how
things work via the Internet. Until then, there will be some
clicks that actually break a few marriages rather than make
them.