Typewriters are no more. The computers have taken their place, Like perhaps the typewriters had taken the place of handwriters, years and years ago.
Typewriters are machines, and we know that machines are not like human beings. They do not feel. They do not have sentiments. But humans do feel.
As the times pass, and values change, people do feel. They feel a lot the absence of someone who remained nearer to them, when they do not find him around anymore. But this is life, and we humans are meant to pass through all sorts of emotional ups and downs. These are all human relationships. When we come to this world, we find parents, relatives, friends, etc etc around us. Their numbers increases, as we grow up, and so are our mutual feelings and attachments with them. A time comes when we usually starts losing physical contacts with the same people , one by one. There can be more than one reasons for that. But losing the beloved ones are just part of the life.
Things are but a little different when the matter comes to our relationships with the machines. We do develop a sense of close attachment, a mental closeness with the machines, that we work with frequently. We do miss them too when they depart from our lives, due to one reason or another. The only differnece here that we presume that machines do not feel anything, when they lose us, or lose our attention and attachment towards them.
Same is the case of my relationships with Typewriters.
I must be may be 6 or 7 years old. There is a very blurring scene of a small institute sort of shop where my father had taken me. It was night, and he was typing. The whole room was bubbling with the sounds of the typewrite machines. I do not remember if my father was learning typing there or he had gone there to type some urgent piece of writing. I simply do not know.
We did not have a typewriter in our house.
When i took commerce in class ninth, typewriting was going to be one of my subjects. Learning typing was thus a must. My father took me to a nearby typing institute, named GREEN TYPING INSTITUTE, and i started learning typing there. I used to be there for an hour daily, five days a week.There were quite a few boys learning typewriting there every hour of the day.
I had started learning typewriting. The basics................
asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj
I repeated these lines hundreds and thousands times , to move to the next lesson
qwert poiuy qwert poiuy qwert poiuy
and then learnt typing the lower line of the typing keysboard, and so on and so forth.
It was the beginning of my long long relationship with the typewriter.
Within a short period of time i had learnt typing basics, and started concentrating more on speed works.
We used to have a periodical test of our typing speeds, where we were given a paragraph of a few hundred words, to type at our maximum possible speed. Our typing speed had been calculated on the basis of number of words typed in a minute's time, on average basis. The mistakes were deleted from the total number of the words typed.
I continued with the same typing institute for quite a long time.
We used to have typewriters in our school too, but i always found it difficult to work on a different typewriter, may be due to my attachment with my machine.
A couple of months before our final examinations of Matriculation examinations (1969), i changed my institute and got enrolled into an another typewriting institute, in the vicinity of the school. The practical examination of Typewriting was taken inside the premises of our school. So most of us, who were the students of the same institute carried the heavy typewriters by hands to our school. We had had to do this because we wanted to conduct our Typewriting practical examination on the same machine with which we had adjusted ourselves. It was a dual relationship, with a sense of internal satisfaction. Otherwise machines are just machines. But in the end it is always the relationship that matters.
The funny side of the story is that in that particular examination, my machine broke down halfway the exam. So i had had to change my machine and completed my Typewriting practical exercises on a machine which i had never used before.
My father bought a second hand typewriter, in 1976 (?).
It was a ROYAL Typewriter ( or HERMES). It was a very heavy metallic machine, and i used a lot. I learnt the cleaning and basic repairing on this typewriter. Whole of my FreeLance Journalism (1980-1991) was done on this particular typewriter.
My parents and brothers and sister were used to the heavy THAK THAK THAK sounds of the metallic fingers of this typewriter, because i was not using it at a particular period of time of the day. Since i was working as auditor during the day times, i had had to type down my articles for newspapers at odd times of the night or early in the morning. My thanks to my parents and brothers and sister who bore these sounds for so long a period of time.
Since i migrated from Pakistan in 1991, i found myself in a totally different environment. In my subsequent years of fight for survival, i lost my relationship with the typewriters. I had had to build a totally new relationship with the machine. This time it was computers. I started using the computer as somewhat modernised form of my old typewriter. But the same relationship could never be built again.
My Typewriter was no more. My long long relationship with the metallic framed machine, called Typewriter, which had started at a veery tender age, is no more. I lost it. Was it my mistake? I do not know.
Right now as i am writing these lines, struggling on the keyboards of this laptop that my children use, the whole film of my past relationship with my Typewriters, swiftly passing in front of my eyes. So fast that i cannot see anything, except the unforgettable sound of my machine.
THAK THAK THAK THAK THAK THAK
asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj
Typewriters are machines, and we know that machines are not like human beings. They do not feel. They do not have sentiments. But humans do feel.
As the times pass, and values change, people do feel. They feel a lot the absence of someone who remained nearer to them, when they do not find him around anymore. But this is life, and we humans are meant to pass through all sorts of emotional ups and downs. These are all human relationships. When we come to this world, we find parents, relatives, friends, etc etc around us. Their numbers increases, as we grow up, and so are our mutual feelings and attachments with them. A time comes when we usually starts losing physical contacts with the same people , one by one. There can be more than one reasons for that. But losing the beloved ones are just part of the life.
Things are but a little different when the matter comes to our relationships with the machines. We do develop a sense of close attachment, a mental closeness with the machines, that we work with frequently. We do miss them too when they depart from our lives, due to one reason or another. The only differnece here that we presume that machines do not feel anything, when they lose us, or lose our attention and attachment towards them.
Same is the case of my relationships with Typewriters.
I must be may be 6 or 7 years old. There is a very blurring scene of a small institute sort of shop where my father had taken me. It was night, and he was typing. The whole room was bubbling with the sounds of the typewrite machines. I do not remember if my father was learning typing there or he had gone there to type some urgent piece of writing. I simply do not know.
We did not have a typewriter in our house.
When i took commerce in class ninth, typewriting was going to be one of my subjects. Learning typing was thus a must. My father took me to a nearby typing institute, named GREEN TYPING INSTITUTE, and i started learning typing there. I used to be there for an hour daily, five days a week.There were quite a few boys learning typewriting there every hour of the day.
I had started learning typewriting. The basics................
asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj
I repeated these lines hundreds and thousands times , to move to the next lesson
qwert poiuy qwert poiuy qwert poiuy
and then learnt typing the lower line of the typing keysboard, and so on and so forth.
It was the beginning of my long long relationship with the typewriter.
Within a short period of time i had learnt typing basics, and started concentrating more on speed works.
We used to have a periodical test of our typing speeds, where we were given a paragraph of a few hundred words, to type at our maximum possible speed. Our typing speed had been calculated on the basis of number of words typed in a minute's time, on average basis. The mistakes were deleted from the total number of the words typed.
I continued with the same typing institute for quite a long time.
We used to have typewriters in our school too, but i always found it difficult to work on a different typewriter, may be due to my attachment with my machine.
A couple of months before our final examinations of Matriculation examinations (1969), i changed my institute and got enrolled into an another typewriting institute, in the vicinity of the school. The practical examination of Typewriting was taken inside the premises of our school. So most of us, who were the students of the same institute carried the heavy typewriters by hands to our school. We had had to do this because we wanted to conduct our Typewriting practical examination on the same machine with which we had adjusted ourselves. It was a dual relationship, with a sense of internal satisfaction. Otherwise machines are just machines. But in the end it is always the relationship that matters.
The funny side of the story is that in that particular examination, my machine broke down halfway the exam. So i had had to change my machine and completed my Typewriting practical exercises on a machine which i had never used before.
My father bought a second hand typewriter, in 1976 (?).
It was a ROYAL Typewriter ( or HERMES). It was a very heavy metallic machine, and i used a lot. I learnt the cleaning and basic repairing on this typewriter. Whole of my FreeLance Journalism (1980-1991) was done on this particular typewriter.
My parents and brothers and sister were used to the heavy THAK THAK THAK sounds of the metallic fingers of this typewriter, because i was not using it at a particular period of time of the day. Since i was working as auditor during the day times, i had had to type down my articles for newspapers at odd times of the night or early in the morning. My thanks to my parents and brothers and sister who bore these sounds for so long a period of time.
Since i migrated from Pakistan in 1991, i found myself in a totally different environment. In my subsequent years of fight for survival, i lost my relationship with the typewriters. I had had to build a totally new relationship with the machine. This time it was computers. I started using the computer as somewhat modernised form of my old typewriter. But the same relationship could never be built again.
My Typewriter was no more. My long long relationship with the metallic framed machine, called Typewriter, which had started at a veery tender age, is no more. I lost it. Was it my mistake? I do not know.
Right now as i am writing these lines, struggling on the keyboards of this laptop that my children use, the whole film of my past relationship with my Typewriters, swiftly passing in front of my eyes. So fast that i cannot see anything, except the unforgettable sound of my machine.
THAK THAK THAK THAK THAK THAK
asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj asdfgf ;lkjhj
nice article sir..for your knowledge people are reverting to these old thak thak..today i read a news that Russian secrete agency ordered 1000 electronic typewrite..because of the fear that information written by computer can be hacked by US :P
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