Few institutions in Poonamallee provided more homely atmosphere than the co-educational typewriting school run by a strict yet circumspect sixtyish gentleman. This seat of learning of secretarial skills showcased two rows of typewriters before which the learners under pupillage sat perched on shaky stools and hammered away woodpecker-like at the keyboards. The line-up ranged from Underwood, Woodstock, Hermes to Remington Rand, the ramshackle oldies allotted to the beginners who had to type mechanically asdfgf followed by a space and then ;lkjhj, like a student learning single reed harmonium by playing the saptaswaras to and fro.
Before long the novice learnt the ropes and could baffle the kids at home by reeling off the letters of the alphabet in the reverse order from ‘z’ to ‘a’ at breakneck speed. He could also amaze by quoting pangrams having all the alphabets like the ‘quick brown box runs over the lazy dog’, and words like ‘automobile, ‘education’ ‘regulation’ and the like that captured all the five vowels, and also surprise the girls at the typing school by pointing out gleefully that ‘stewardesses’ is the longest word in English that can be typed using only the left hand and the left thumb is the lone finger of a typist that has no function in the blind touch. Typing of some speedsters would be frenetic, reverberating like the staccato of an assault rifle AK47 in a military ambush or noisy burst of torrential rain on a hot tin roof.
Though a no-nonsense disciplinarian, the elderly tutor had his humane trait as well. One certain evening he found an unsigned mushy love letter in a girl’s folder in which her worksheets were filed. Aided by the investigative skills of a Sherlock Holmes, he identified the machine on which the epistle was typed from the zigzag ant-procession like alignment and the author of mischief from the abundance of spelling and grammatical errors. He cornered the moon-stricken Romeo and threatened to involve the police but pardoned him as he blubbered, begged and promised not to repeat such mistakes. The merciful tutor promised he will treat the matter as closed and not rake it up in future adding grandly, “I am like the space bar that takes things forward. Not the backspace that takes things backwards”.
My father’s friend, a rheumy-eyed research scholar, visited us with his brand new Olivetti portable typewriter with a two-in-one black and red ribbon. It was sleek and shiny with a powder blue metallic cover that closed the machine firmly tight with a sharp click. It was pure joy when I was permitted to use it which I did enjoying the muffled clickety-clack sound made by that well-oiled Italian beauty and the musical ping that forewarned the line was nearing the end. After watching my speed and the proud look I wore, he confessed his typing was slow and sedate, not comparable with mine, as he deployed only two index fingers. “But bear in mind,” he added with a deprecating cough, “ultimately it is what you typed that matters — not the speed with which you did it.”
