By: Ganesh Saili
Come to think of it, I belong to a muddled generation – we have seen eight decades come and go; we have seen two centuries pass and been witness to two millennia. Around the 1970s, I began this toying with words on a manual typewriter. Getting a word count was tough, if not nigh impossible: count the words per line, multiply them by the number of lines per page, and all you got was an approximation! Correcting errors was a whole other thing: you had to learn to use strips of finger-length Typex correction tape, which meant the ribbon had to be switched to neutral, followed by retyping the error and switching over to the use-ribbon mode. Then you retyped the correction.
Below our home stood the Remington Typewriter Repair Company, a small shop-cum-residence owned by Saran Lal Kapoor, my classmate Prem Kapoor’s father. With snub-nosed made-in-Germany brushes he would ‘service’ our Olivetti typewriter. But it meant that the house stank of kerosene for weeks. That was the stuff he used to clean the machine.
Suddenly, without warning, we leap-frogged from manual typewriters to computers, having somehow skipped electric typewriters and the IBM golf ball. Our relationship with Kores, that had begun with two miniature bottles of whitener and thinner, was over. There was a special pink correcting fluid that had memories of nail polish, which was used for correcting cyclostyling stencils. Slowly, one by one, the stationery shops stopped selling Kores correcting fluids to schoolchildren, for they put it in paper bags and ‘sniffed’ it to get a high. I can only imagine the stationers’ relief when computers and pixels arrived. The printers needed no monitoring.
The wrong side of the 1990s saw me trying to teach photography to Officer Trainees of the All India Services with analogue cameras. Ah! The perils of fogged film! I reminded them to load their film in the shade. Twenty years flashed by, another era dawned with DSLRs, and then, just about the time I was done, the world of mobile camera phones dawned and I gave up and walked away.
Progress has come. I remember the red telephone at Seth Om Prakash’s Sitaram & Sons. He owned the only hardware store in Landour Bazaar (now there are too many). We would pick up the receiver to hear the operator ask: ‘Number-please?
‘187 please?’ I’d say, asking after my father.
‘Ring later! Lunch-time! Saili Sa’ab’s in Chardukan!’ Philip Ryper, the telephone operator answered, shutting me up. Then came the ‘busy tone’ of the crossbar exchange and the kar-kar of the spinning-a-dial phone. Today all you hear is ‘Network nahi hai!’ or BSNL (or what the boys call Bhai Saab Nahin Lageyga). We have taken to the cell phone like ducks to water, and even a fuddy-duddy like me makes video calls.
Over the years, one has learned that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Life has taught me not to slap a man chewing gutka. Long years of teaching have taught me that it does not matter where you happen to be plying your trade, there will always be three kinds of students: those who learn from reading; those who learn from observing, and then there are those who must pee on an electric fence to find out for themselves: it’s the last variety that manages to get any teacher’s goat.
Growing older, one knows that there are fewer things worth waiting for. And wipe that grin off your face, for you will get there eventually (that is, if you’re lucky). Instead of lying about your age, you will start bragging about it. You will be liberated from hair dye because there will be no hair left to dye. Sooner or later, you and your hair will part ways; only a moustache might remain, albeit tinged with grey which is easily fixed with a frayed toothbrush. Afterward, the plastic handle of the much-reused-toothbrush can help draw your pyjama string.
After all, we were the generation that tried and persevered until somehow we managed to muddle through. Nowadays, if you get stuck, you’d just search for an instructional video on YouTube.
Ganesh Saili born and home-grown in the hills belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their own pictures. Author of two dozen books; some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.
