As a child, I was fascinated with typewriters. After finishing High School, it was the practice in the 1970s and early 1980s, especially for women, to learn typewriting (and the related lost art of 'shorthand'). This was in preparation for a career in Secretaryship.
There were these typing schools that prepared students for 'Lower' and 'Higher' exams in typewriting, with word speeds of 40 and 60 a minute (if I remember right). I had the opportunity to accompany my elder cousin when she started her typing course in the late 70s, and still remember my awe at the rows of typewriters on which students were noisily pecking away, learning their 'a-s-d-f-g-f" and ";-l-k-j-h-j".
Typewriters themselves looked elegant and gleaming, and the smell of ink, carbon paper and some kind of lubricating oil were persistent, but to me they were machines that processed words, some kind of a mechanical computer (later on, in college, I would learn to use another mechanical device--a hand-operated Facit calculating machine).
Typewriters were the hope and bane of many a writer-to-be. For others working in offices (as a 'stenographer' or 'typist'), it provided a whole career. Despite difficulties in correcting, despite mechanical irregularities and smudged print, typewriters stood us in good stead for almost the whole of the 20th century. For me, learning to type was a thrilling experience (perhaps also because my handwriting was terrible!) and I retain fond memories of my time in the typing institute.
For at least two generation, the excuse of "...going to learn typing" a legitimate way to get out of home, especially for young girls (in the Indian context) who had just finished school and didn't want, couldn't afford, or didn't qualify for college. There were a million of the inevitable 'typewriting' romances, caused on account of the close (and mostly unsupervised) interaction among teenagers of both sexes. Learning typing was thus also a rite of passage...
It is with regret, therefore, that I report the
closure of the last typewriter factory, Godrej & Boyce, in Mumbai, India.
"We are not getting many orders now," Milind Dukle, Godrej and Boyce's general manager, told the paper. "From the early 2000s onwards, computers started dominating. All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us. 'Till 2009, we used to produce 10,000 to 12,000 machines a year. But this might be the last chance for typewriter lovers. Now, our primary market is among the defence agencies, courts and government offices. There's still a market, albeit a (very) small one. And we're not enough to sustain an industry."
Here's to the fond memories of this remarkable device that--not so silently--contributed to commerce, creative writing, livelihoods and the growing up of several generations of young men and women.
