Learning The Keyboard

When we were growing up in Calcutta, in the 1970s and 80s to be precise, there were several typewriting schools where they taught you typewriting and shorthand. There was one LCC - Lake Commercial College - near our locality which was pretty famous. Every time you passed by their office you would see hordes of young men and women waiting to go in to attend to their classes. 

Before the advent of photocopiers and computers, typewriting was a profession in itself. All offices employed typists. Senior officers and managers had stenographers. That is, a person (mostly ladies) who would take down dictation given by his or her boss in short hand and then type it out as a letter or note or whatever the instruction was. Copies of the letter used to be made by inserting carbon paper between sheets of white paper. It was another era. Another age. 

Thousands of people made a living out of type writing. Low paid job but a job nevertheless. And millions of young men and women would learn it very diligently in the hope of getting such a job. Jobs in those days were something scarce. There were self-employed typists too. They would sit near a court or near an important road junction with a type writer on a ramshackle table and would type out applications and official letters etc for others against a small payment. You took a handwritten note to them and they would type it out neatly as per your instructions. Even I have got my CV written by a typist several times. 

Although I respect all jobs and honour the desire to make a living out of anything and everything, somehow, I grew up hating the job of a typist. I could never imagine how anyone could aspire to be a typist. You aspire to be a musician, a player, a poet, a writer, a chartered accountant, an engineer or a doctor. But you do not aspire to be a typist or stenographer, for God's sake. It might be realistic for an ordinary boy or girl looking for a job (and I do not want to insult any typist if that is the only job he could find in those difficult days to support his family) but if your aspiration itself is so low then you would perhaps end up being a janitor. 

I always hated the job of a clerk, possibly because my father was one. And a typist was even worse than a clerk. I was not sure as to what I wanted to do in life but I was very very certain and clear in my mind that I would never become a typist or clerk or government servant. So this is how I grew up.

Cut to 1989. I am a teacher in the back end of beyond. At a southern foothill village school in Bhutan where there is no black top road or electricity. We have to prepare our own question papers for the boys. It involves typing out the questions on cyclostyle paper (supplied by the school) and then making copies of them on a cyclostyle machine. 

With zero keyboard knowledge I would spend hours in the staff room looking for the keys and punching them one by one. To type out an average page, that would now take me perhaps five minutes, would take me a few days. And my question papers were always very long. 

So I had to literally spend hours with the school type writer during off periods in the staff room. And then during a conversation with my Irish neighbour cum colleague Aisling, I learnt that in Ireland keyboard skills are taught in schools. For the first time in life I realised that no matter how much I hate the aspiration to become a typist, the keyboard skill is an important skill to know. Somewhat like cycling or swimming. Of course the advent of computers has made it a life-skill now but even back then when we were students learning the key board would have been a useful thing to do. 

Cut to 1991. I am in Mongar (a dot in eastern Bhutan) and my neighbour cum friend Jayanta Sen has a small portable typewriter on which he types out his question papers. I think it was an Olivetti. He knew the keyboard and how to type. He told me, why don't you learn it too? There is nothing much to it. It will speed up your work. I thought it was a brilliant idea. I borrowed the type writer home from him and in my free time I would practice. asdfg ;lkjh etc. Those who know typing would know that this is the first step towards learning the keyboard. 

Finally, after a lot of practice I became quite proficient with the keyboard and could quite type out a quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs - the sentence that has all the letters of the alphabet. 

Cut to 1992. I am in the journalism training school of Times group in Delhi and I am told we have to file our stories on the computer. ET in those days was the most computerised newspaper in the country. We had the Atex system, which in those days, was the most advanced system for newspaper offices. No one else had it in India.

My goodness!! How can I type a story on the computer? Unless the tip of the pen's nib touches a smooth piece of paper my brain does not work. There is a direct connection between the two. The brain and the feel of the pen on paper. But I had to slowly adapt to the idea of typing on the computer. 

I read a book of journalism where this subject was discussed. It said, true that many people say Shakespeare did not type his writings. Does it affect his work? The answer is, perhaps with a typewriter he would be a better writer, we do not know !!!! I got the message. 

I soon became a very fast typist. I could write, I still can, without looking at the keyboard. I can write even while chatting with someone. I can do it as effortlessly as I can walk or cycle. Of course the soft keyboard of the computer helps. The old typewriters were tough to work with. The computers are very easy.

I always remember what my mother used to say and I believe in it wholeheartedly. No knowledge goes a waste. And everything you learn will come in handy one day. In her language even if you learn how to make the cowdung cake - the worst possible job one can have - it will be of use some day (in Bengali she would say - ghute dite sikhleo dekhbi ekdin kaje aschhe). Incidentally, I have seen village women do it on high walls. It is indeed an extremely skillful thing to do. Keep a big lump on your left hand, pick a fistful with you right hand and paste a round shaped thin thing on the wall. No matter how gross it sounds to your urban consciousness and upbringing, it is an extremely skillful thing to do. 

In case you have seen a newspaper vendor throw the rolled paper on the second floor balcony from his running cycle you will understand what I am talking about. It is somewhat in that league of skillfulness. And I admit that I cannot do it. But I can certainly marvel at it.