Blue Tick to Blue Ink

Who does not know the ubiquitous blue tick? The famed blue tick in WhatsApp, has she read my message yet or not?

- Pooja Shah

I somehow very rarely kept the blue ticks on; I don’t want to know whether someone has read my messages or not. The blue ticks unnecessarily create a pressure to immediately reply to the messages and that is why for the major part of my WhatsApp journey I have never kept the blue ticks on.

Of late, many of my articles go back to my mother, and today again I go back to her. In the ’80s and 90s, mobile phones were not yet invented and we had to rely on the good old landline to communicate with friends and family. My mother had a few sisters and they were all married in different states of India. STD calls were not so cheap, so they would regularly write letters to each other. Their preferred way was the inland letters and, yes, coincidentally, they were blue in colour as well. I would also read all those letters that were written to my mother.