Type, type, type

Growing up in Calcutta in the 70s and 80s I learnt to hate type writing!! Those days in Calcutta we had various type writing training schools, which used to churn out a large number of students with the basic knowledge of type writing and shorthand. Not all of them got jobs as “steno-typists” and most of them would end up as yet another unemployed young man or woman with a particular skill that was of no use. But still they learnt it. Generally during vacation after higher secondary exams and religiously apply for the post of steno-typists.

I used to hate this mindset. I mean, if you had to aspire for something you might as well aspire for something really big. You can’t dream to be an ill paid typist in a small commercial firm. I never dreamt to be anything – least of all a typist. And therefore I grew this healthy disregard for typing as a skill to learn with the intention of monetising it later through a job.

By the way, I don’t think type writing or any other job per se is bad or demeaning or below anyone’s dignity. If one has to survive he has to take up whatever comes his way. And I salute those who sweep the roads to support their families. But, to have the ambition to be a typist is a very bleak and gloomy way of looking at one’s own future.

Anyway, my priorities changed a bit when I went to Bhutan as a teacher. There we had to type our own question papers and then cyclostyle them ourselves. And being an English teacher my question papers used to run into several pages. And it used to take me days and days of really very hard work. Finding out each letter from a typewriter’s keyboard and punching the keys is quite a struggle.

I realised that I had to learn typing. And one afternoon I saw the Irish volunteer in our school typing really fast on the keyboard. I asked her if she had learnt typing and she said it was a basic skill taught in their schools to all the students. I was pretty amazed and (as always with her) pretty impressed too. It opened a new eye to me.

Later in Mongar I found my Bengali friend from the high school - Jayanta Sen - had a small red, cute, portable typewriter. I borrowed it from him to type my question papers at home in the evenings. He had not only learnt typing (to be a typist, which he could never ultimately become) but also had the machine. So I asked him to teach me the basics, which he gladly did.

I think they call it “fingering”!!

I learnt it diligently and could soon type out things pretty fast.

After this when I entered journalism – quite by chance - I was told that you wrote your stories only on the computer. Initially I used to find this an extremely daunting task – thinking and writing on the keyboard!! It almost sounded impossible. I was so used to writing with pen on paper. Unless the nib touched a soft paper my thought process wouldn’t even start. It was a completely different feeling. Almost like making love with pen and paper.

Writing on the keyboard in comparison was like making love to a lifeless doll.

But once you are forced to do something you start learning how to endure a thing that cannot be cured. Soon I became an expert at typing. And it worked as an asset in my growth as a journalist.

I once read a book on professional writing and there the author argued that typewriting skill is a must to be a good writer. He said, people ask that Shakespeare never had a typewriter!! His logic was, Shakespeare would have been a better writer if he knew typing and had a word processor.

I think it is true.

Friends think I am absolutely amazing with the keyboard. I can quite write a whole story on my computer while chatting with a friend across the table. Indeed even I think I am a good typist now.

But that’s not the point. The point I am trying to make here is no knowledge – acquired first hand through hard work - goes a waste. Some day or the other it will save you in a critical situation.