The Signing Off of Signatures
It took me back to when I was 15, sitting in the classroom, scribbling endlessly in the pages of my rough book—practicing my signature before the board exams. Back then, our teachers told us with great solemnity, “This is your identity. It can never change.”
I tried loops, underlines, bold initials, even dramatic flourishes. My rough book was a battlefield of squiggles, each one asking, Is this me? An uncle - family friend, who fancied himself amongst other things, a graphologist, made it worse by explaining how a signature revealed personality—slanting upwards meant ambition, a straight line meant stability, clarity, etc. I wanted a signature I’d never get wrong, because it wasn’t just a mark. It was me on paper.
Giving your signature felt like a rite of passage. Parents would hand you a cheque to withdraw money, and you’d sign your name at the back. That small act felt exhilarating—almost like the bank account was secretly yours.
And yes, in my growing up years, we mocked those who used their thumb impression instead of signature. “Angoota chaap,” we said, a term for the illiterate. Funny how karma works. Today, all of us—digitally literate and professionally polished—press our thumbs on biometric scanners. The thumbprint has returned, not as shame but as authentication. As an aside, if and when you have any reason to go to a physical bank, you’ll notice, if lucky, a ball-pen dangling near the deposit slips..but for sure there will be no ink pads around.
Somewhere along the way, the signature slipped into obsolescence.
Cheques are rare. Forms are online. Applications are DocuSigned. Bank accounts open with Aadhaar OTPs. Even when someone asks for a signature now, it feels ceremonial—present, but not essential. Even courts now accept IP addresses or 16-bit hex numbers as proof of consent.
A signature once told a story. It leaned forward in ambition or slouched in hesitation. It danced, it swirled, it expressed personality. A fingerprint or an OTP tells no story. It merely says: Yes, this is you.
And here lies the quiet shift. We’ve moved from expressing identity to verifying identity, from authorship to acknowledgment, from the intimacy of a flourish to the impersonality of a ping.
A signature was slow and deliberate—a tiny ritual that said, I take responsibility.
An OTP is instant and transactional. It says, The system approves me.
This is the larger change that hides in plain sight. In the pursuit of convenience and security, we have outsourced our very selfhood to the system. The pause that once reminded us “this act is mine” has disappeared. Identity is no longer something we perform; it is something we are granted.
In a world obsessed with speed, the personal has become optional. There is no time for winks and curls. The system doesn’t want your story. It wants your compliance.
And so the loops and tails fade into memory. Our identity now lives in six-digit codes, green ticks, and faceless scans.
We used to sign our name to announce our presence and consent.
Now, we just sign in.
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