On Father's Day - My Father and Computer

No, this is not the story of a youngster teaching his dad modern computer skills. It is the opposite of that. There were no computers when I was a teenager. It is the tale of a caring father, who I remember today, on the Father’s Day, for his farsightedness. The year was 1978. I had appeared for my matriculation examinations and was awaiting the results. There used to be a gap of three to four months between the matriculation examination and admissions to colleges. My father enrolled me into a typing school. There were no PCs those days. Indeed, none had even imagined that such a thing as a Personal Computer would ever become an inalienable part of our lives. Even until much later all that the humanity had was punch-card type computers adorning mysterious computer centres of universities and multi-nationals.

Now, typing schools in those days were mass-skilling centres. Unemployed youth would crowd my centre too that was housed in a run-down building in which dozens would clatter away on rickety typewriters for hour-long sessions. The environment was depressing, students were not too excited about life. Chairs and tables were wobbly, ceiling fans rotated above just for the feel-good. But the fee was a mere ten Rupees a month!

The owner-teacher was actually a good person, who would do rounds of the hall and challenge us with new lessons – a newspaper cutting, a yellow or pink advertisement slip that came inserted into newspapers, or some such thing he could lay his hands on. I was told to begin with ASDFGF and ;LKJHJ. In a few days I scaled up to “A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” I kept picking up speed and soon could type away at a reasonable rate.

The teacher was happy with my progress, that of a mere teenager rubbing shoulders with much older men. Then one day the penny dropped. The matriculation results were declared, and my photo appeared in newspapers, who had published the merit-list of the State Board. As had become a daily routine I was typing away at my desk on that day too. The teacher came to me with a newspaper in his hand, excited and almost breathless and asked, “You have come in the merit list of the whole state. Why the hell are you learning how to type?” In his opinion only the jobless, and those seeking the careers of stenographers needed to learn how to type. Well, I was technically jobless too, even though I was only fifteen. I told him, “My father has asked me to learn this skill and that is why I am here.”

I continued for a couple of weeks more, then other things demanded attention and I quit the typing classes without mastering, say sixty or eighty words per minute.

Later in life, when PCs came on our desks and we had to do some typing ourselves, I had a head start over most people in office. In all of my postings, my stenographers and secretaries were surprised to learn that I could type faster than them and also with fewer errors. It was a pity to see colleagues asking their assistants type out even Power Point presentations.

One has many things to thank one’s father for. But it impossible to thank him enough for his farsightedness in ensuring that I learnt a futuristic skill early in life – TYPING.

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