Make Your Own Family Tree

Facebook has been about friends, and see what a huge, though loss making, hit it has been!

But think about it for one second.

What happens when all your friends are gone, and when the boss who so doted on you, suddenly realises his affection and politics were misplaced.

Where do you go?

I know.

Back home to Pappa! Back to family. Back to the village you came from. Back to all those relations you would usually meet only at weddings or birthday parties.

Well, what do you know? Blood is thicker than water.

The truth is, we live in this illusion in the city, that if we have friends, who needs family. Well, when the city disappears, and the friends do to, what are you actually left with, Einstein? ... Bing! Family!

So yeah, most people have their family in the village. If you live in the city, then the city is your village.

And in the village, only one question rules "Tera Baap Kaun Hai(Who's your Daddy?)". You get jobs and invitations based only on who you're related to. People will talk to you, only if you're related.

And that, my dear friend, is what the million dollar question to living in the city is all about. Finding and figuring out your family tree.

So yeah, this is where you say, 'Dude, it's so freaking easy, there are tonnes of websites like Ancestry.com and Geni.com which already have my tree within.'

Reality Check
Each of these websites, are all paid, except for Family Search, which coming from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, means that no Catholic would be caught dead there :p

So far, the one website which I actually found tonnes of information, is Geni.com, but they want me to pay upwards of $9 a month, to view my own family tree, which for an Indian, is sheer heresy.

So the simplest way to handle this, is to actually log out of Geni, then search for my ancestors, which in my case is super easy because my paternal family tree has a unique name Egipsy, which should cover not more than 20 living people. Geni showed me around 26.

Value
Ancestry.com actually links your genealogy data with birth certificates and the like, from the national database.
But none of these websites do this for India, they can't.

Solution
Use an open source solution like Gramps to make your own family tree.
Then when someone like me is ready with a solution, just send in your own, so that all these family trees can be properly grown into a full database which anyone can share and explore with.

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