Boys and girls growing up in the city in the ’60s and ’70s were told to learn typing as an added skill to score a few extra points in the job market. Shops in the outer circle of Connaught Place, market of Lajpat Nagar, lanes of Krishna Nagar and kuchas of Chandni Chowk happily advertised their services. Almost every middle class colony had a typing school where students sat on a wooden stool, hunched over a typewriter, trying to get right their first lesson in typing, “A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” The sentence apparently prepared them to type all alphabets of the language. Most sat with a ready whitener to erase any possible mistake. The less the whitener used the more skilful was the man behind the typewriter. Many took real pride in their speed, others were more fastidious and made somebody read out from the page clipped to a writing board. Remington typewriters became almost synonymous with the machine though in many parts of the country, Godrej and Boyce ruled the world of typewriters.
Evenings were particularly busy for these typing schools and their students. Some youngsters even added shorthand to their skills with the typewriter, thus preparing for a life of dictation.
In Delhi, till around 20 years ago, the typewriters were almost ubiquitous. They could be found outside all courts, they could be seen behind police stations. The typists sat under a tree outside municipal office ready to type out affidavits, birth, marriage and death certificate. Some had proper shops in the heart of the city and thought nothing of asking future civil servants to wait in a queue. Others actually took copiously written notes from students in the evening and transformed them into neatly typed A-4 sheets by morning. And yes, in those days of pre-computers, all newspapers insisted on receiving neatly typed articles from freelancers. Considering typewriters were seen as a public amenity, few families had one to be proud of. That effectively meant that the typists at these shops often got to read the next morning’s op-ed before the editor!
All that is but gone now. For many years, the sound of the keys of typewriters has gone dead, replaced by the more gentle sound of a computer. Now laptops too have made an entry in the market once monopolised by typewriters.
Some old-timers, contrary to common perception, still hold on to the good old typing machines. Their business has nosedived but they sit glued to their machine next to young men with computers outside courts and police stations. Some set shop outside Embassy of Pakistan, ready to type out elaborate documents for a measly sum.
They are a reminder of a part of our life that is now reduced to mere memory. No whitener can erase that experience though.
