Typewriter

Today I happened to go to the RTO office in Indira Nagar, Bangalore. The reason was to get an affidavit made for some thing related to our car.

It was after a long while that I went into a very typical sarkari area and first since r2i. Had been to BSNL exchange many a times but that was still an office.

It was a very standard dingy, stinky, dusty campus with small chambers around. All kinds of people around. Usual agents(i wish to use the word dalaals) trying to trap someone to use their clients' services, etc. etc. You know what I am saying.
The first thing I noticed as soon as I got off the car was a booze shop!! Can you believe it?! A booze shop within the RTO campus. Loud Kannada disco playing. about 5 men standing outside either shopping for drinks or sipping some from the transparents, flimsy plastic cups. And 2 of them were really well dressed. As if they were passing by and thought...garmi bahut hai...chalo ek pee lein.(It is quite hot...lets have a drink).

Anyways, I tried to avoid them all and went past a series of agents to reach 2 women sitting on a tables and chairs and TYPEWRITERS. To be honest. I had completely forgotten about these. The last time I had met these gentlemen was in 1997!

Dusty, antique looking typewriters are still used to type affidavits and other legal documents in the california of India-Bangalore.
I went to one of these ladies and asked her for the job. She took the template papers and started typing. First I was really amused. But soon it all lost its novelty as soon as I saw a switched off desktop computer inside. Nicely covered with an off white circular crochet cover.
All the one thousand three hundred and fifty nine flies, staring idiots, heat, smell and dust together could not keep me away from thinking why is she still typewriting. I mean why would you want to.

Anyways, with 7 spelling mistakes including misspelling my FIL's name, she finished the job in 20 minutes.

I had to ask her the big question- WHY? She said in english, " oh! that.....the computer keeeeeeeys are veeeery soft. I don't lika (like it) ita. Typewriter is gud(good)". I said "so you do not use the computer just because it is smooth. But it will save you so much energy of spelling correction, paper setting, etc., etc. and then you can even have some standard templates ready." The boy sitting inside on the STD/ PCO/ Xerox/ FAX counter said "6 ghanta to power hi nahi aata hai na madam"(the power isn't there for 6 hours during the day). Now that made some sense and it is sad too. But still, there is something known as UPS. I didn't want to argue further and left amazed at how the IT capital of the world works.

I am shocked at how all IT superminds of the world have come from India specially from the 3 southern states of India.

Truly, India is incredible!