On-line Matrimonials
- By Sam George
- Published 11/8/2006
Sam George
Sam George is the Executive Director of PARIVAR International - a non-profit initiative to address the needs of youth and families of Asian Indian origin in North America and to the Asian Indian community worldwide. Parivar means family in many Indian languages. Sam George also serves as one of the founding directors of Urban India Ministries
www.UrbanIndia.org Sam George and his wife, Mary have spoken at premarital and family events in many countries. They are parents of two boys and make their home in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Sam is the author of the book “Understanding the Coconut Generation: Ministry to the Americanized Asian Indians." Check out this website www.CoconutGeneration.com Coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside) is a metaphor for the Americanized Asian Indians. Sam George can be reached at sam@coconutgeneration.com
Last Sunday at church I met an old friend from New Jersey. He was beaming and glowing all over. Excitedly he introduced me to his fiancee standing beside him. I congratulated them and was very happy for them. They invited us to their wedding later next year and I promised I will be there. Soon I discovered that they had met over a popular Indian matrimonial website and have decided to get married.
Last week’s Businessweek carried a story on Yahoo-India attempt to buy out another popular Indian marriage portal. India’s growing Internet market, popularity of matrimonial adverstisement in print media, arrange marriage culture etc also make this a perfect strategy. Most Indian matrimonials website draw massive amount of repeat customers and bound to increase traffice in the days to come. So global search and portal companies attempt to gain a share of the pie make perfect business sense.
But what they don’t tell is the growing breakup and divorce among relationships that began on the Internet. Virtuality might aid annonymity and searchability over a larger pool of people, but does not help in building strong relationship skills or get marriage started on a right footing. Today young, tech savvy, now generation is jumping in and out of marriage with a mouse click.
Finding the person is one thing, but building lasting and fulfilling relationship is entire another thing. Last year alone, there were over 15000 divorces among Asian Indian in America. Three out of five Indian American marriages are being dissolved in less than a year. Read entire report. Disturbing days ahead!
