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.