The Two Blue Ticks

It just started with what life has just become a whatsapp message. Increasingly, I see my friends, family members, my siblings and even my own children communicating via these messages instead of picking up the phone and calling. My life has been reduced to sending a message and waiting for seeing the ticks changing to two blue ticks. I actually am also guilty of sending messages via this and keeping in touch with everyone. It’s my lifeline to a teenage son in college where I try to monitor being a brown mom and using my magical innate helicopter parenting skills (every Indian mother has them and if you’re Punjabi; you are blessed and armed with magic to zero on your child). Its like being a mother makes you a super combative drone to monitor your child. A DP (display picture for the unmitigated) with a girl makes our antennas buzz and half the clan will call and congratulate you on your daughter-in- law and the rest will say munda bigad Gaya!

It just doesn’t end here; status updates on smart phones are also subject to debate, speculation more than basmati prices, rain causing havoc or just the state of affairs. The only thing that can cause all this to stop but leads to another kind of satsang and non stop calls is when the maid says, Bibiji I cant come to work.

However, some days bright, meaningful messages are sent and one such was by my sister who started posting these messages, one lines from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and explanations by a Thai Sikh gentleman who have explained them in clean, simple languages what the essence of the lines are, thirty lines and they are so spot on. Here, I marvel and salute the power of communication that how a person sitting in Thailand sends lines and the meanings to a lady in Chandigarh and she then shares with people in England, US and the heart of Punjab. But, the best part is I still like keeping them the old –fashioned way, by printing them and keeping a hard copy. As, easy it is to forward to people in bulk, it is easier to delete and to erase.

Life has been reduced to this s, making friends, adding them on our list, messaging them and then reducing them by one unfriend button. It’s this virtual adding on and deleting people by a stroke that has led to lack of emotional quotient in the children, society and everyone around us. Its been reduced to this only. Another one, is when they forward inspirational messages as it is the Chinese year of the tiger, rat or mouse and forwarding it will give you seven years of good luck otherwise, misfortune will follow. Every God / Goddess has special powers, prayers need to be forwarded to at least seven people, and money bags will follow and if you don’t, that anyways gets me worried. My friends make fun of me, as I forward the chain to not break it. Also, the medical information passed on to save a dying person in far off place and I sit in a village whose name they can’t even pronounce is beyond comprehension.

This can go on and on, I have made innumerable friends, have got in touch with them, here and across borders.

However, as the song goes daakiya daak aya , my life is reduced to seeing the two ticks go blue.