Description

Ashok Mishra spends his working life identifying risk. He trusts processes, evidence and the comfort of things that can be verified. His personal life is harder to measure. At thirty-six, he has built a stable existence in Mumbai, but stability has gradually become routine, and routine has become a kind of loneliness he rarely admits.

A family wedding takes him away from that routine. Surrounded by celebration, relatives and the easy closeness of other people’s lives, Ashok becomes more aware of what is absent from his own. Soon after returning home, he opens a dating app and meets Aditi.

She is warm without being intrusive. She notices details other people overlook and remembers ordinary things he has said. Their messages begin to shape his evenings. The two blue ticks on his phone no longer mean that a message has merely been read; they mean that someone is there.

But how well can we know someone we have never met? A photograph can be borrowed. A story can be rehearsed. Even kindness can be carefully constructed. As trust grows across a screen, Ashok must decide whether he is finally allowing another person into his life—or seeing only what he desperately wants to see.

The Price of Two Blue Ticks is a contemporary Indian novel of emotional suspense about loneliness, digital intimacy and the fragile boundary between connection and deception.

About The Author 

Pankaj Jha is a Risk and Compliance professional with fifteen years of experience. He holds a B.Com (Hons) and an LL.B., and has lived, studied and worked across Darbhanga, Imphal, Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. A former president of two Toastmasters clubs, he won the District 98 Area S4 Humorous Speech Contest. He writes about ambition, vulnerability and the choices people make when private hopes meet public pressure.

Email: jha.pankaj0789@gmail.com

Phone: +91 9650677046