The Typist

My dad always knew I didn't fall in the high IQ category and desperately wanted me to learn a skill that would keep me afloat, so there I was, forced to sit amidst 30 girls (yeah learning how to type was back then a 'girly' thing), and battle the sticky n rickety keyboard on a 1970s Remington - my father was drafting a future as a 'typist' for me, hell I don't blame him, what better for someone who never passed a single exam in school on his first attempt. Well, I did learn to like it with time, as much for the fact that I could type faster than most in the class as for the pretty lady who sat next to me in my class. Quite often I could hear a strange synchronisation in our typewriter's cluttering noise, got me thinking...maybe...we were meant to meet…destiny…(!background romantic music!) Anyway, she disappeared one day and I went on to pass my typewriting exams. This certification was something I preferred not to discuss with anyone.

Years later, during one of my military leave / breaks, I met with an old friend of mine in Bangalore, he had found an interesting hobby - understanding computers and the 'Internet'. He tried explaining the concept to my wandering mind in vain, and wound up the effort with an email ID for me on 'Hotmail', not because he believed it was 'the' future, but because he thought it made him look cool. Anyway, I ended up with an email ID which I use to this day as a wonderful collection of spam mails.

I had seen a computer in school, we had to remove our shoes and enter the room, lest the dust messed with the machines (or something to that effect), it was the only air-conditioned room in the school, and I don't think we got much out of the 30 odd minutes we spent on it every week. I managed to learn how to start a computer game though, and that was that.

(..snap! back to my story..)

well, hell ya.. the Internet did catch on, and with it came a rather interesting twist to my life...

My military unit was based in a hill station in one of the northern states of India, and quite a few of my colleagues did end up with email IDs created for them by people who like I mentioned before - felt 'cool' creating email IDs. These friends of mine felt 'cool' distributing these IDs to all the pretty women they met, now this 'coolness' created a problem - there was very limited access to the Internet, the nearest Internet cafe was a good 2 hour drive to a key city. As expected, someone did cash in on this opportunity and we had the first paid Internet booth (was a dingy garage actually) in the region. The charge was a whopping INR 50 for every 15 minutes, a more than princely sum for lowly paid soldiers like us. The problem gets worse when you have a 'keyboard' with random alphabets, arranged with no obvious logic - the solution ladies and gentlemen - a typist 'slash' me 'slash' myself 'slash' Moi 'slash' yours truly ! Everyone needed to maximize the 50 bucks that they paid for the 15 minutes. Over the next few months, I turned into a 'knowledgebase' of every love, lust and hate story in my battalion...thus started a new chapter in my life. I was impressed by the strength my fingers possessed, I could make or break lives, and the lives that depended on these lives, hmm... which in military terms meant, I could bring down the battalion..the army..the country...Hail, the power of a typist!