Death of an era

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Death of an era

Shantanu Dutta

27 April, 2011

The type writer is gone; but the fingers tapping on the keyboards of laptops and touch screens have not changed. They have only shifted gears.

TODAY MARKS the end of an era. I know that this term is often a cliché and is often used when a celebrity or an iconic figure dies; but today it is fit to use the term. For today, after 1867, when type writers for the first time changed the face of writing and shaped careers like publishing, editing and journalism, the last company still manufacturing type writers shut shop bowing to the vagaries of time and the advancement of technology.

Godrej, whose type writers were synonymous with government offices and are still a familiar sight outside rural India’s dusty courtrooms, and the last man standing in the world of note books, net books and tablet PCs has finally taken its final bow and now stopped making type writers. In terms of its significance, it might be comparable to the dinosaurs becoming extinct after dominating the landscape for millennia.

The demise of the type writer has made me think afresh about the inevitability of change and nothing ever being permanent in this world of rapidly emerging technology. A decade ago, type writers were already obsolete; in fact in 2001, the leading Operating System was Windows 2000, which was considered state of the art. Anybody possessing a Windows 95 or even 98 machine would have been considered archaic already.

Some of us are uncomfortable with change and refuse to meet it in the eye; but technology forces us to confront it and acknowledge that it is happening even if our warts and wrinkles we will not dodge and camouflage. Other such changes flashed past my mind when I read about the passing of the type writer: the telex machine, once synonymous with speed and efficiency – there even used to be a company called Hindustan Teleprinters that produced teleprinters and telex equipment. The telegram; still surviving but only just, the incandescent bulb with the filament, the trunk call, the mechanical watch, the Ambassador car and many such.

A lot has changed in terms of technology in the last seventy years or so if we were to keep 1947, the year of independence as our benchmark. But the saddest thing to have changed in this span of time is in the nature of our values. At the time of independence, we had no Tihar Jail and its ilk, but giants lived there and often died there in primitive conditions. Recall the famous cellular jail at Port Blair or even the many Central Jails in mainland India. Recall the Lahore jail for instance, where the revolutionary freedom fighter Jatin Das fasted to death protesting against the unequal treatment of Indian and British prisoners. Jatin Das’s wish was not granted in his life time. Today’s VIP prisoners accused of siphoning crores move bail applications faster than they ever signed files in office and demand ghar ka khana as a matter of right.

Sometimes I feel nostalgic about the past and how technology is making even the present obsolete. A machine as recent as the fax machine is now on its way out as people now prefer to scan and e mail documents rather than fax them. But sometimes I feel helpless at the limitations of technology that it can never change the human heart – something that is and always will be the prerogative of God. Technology’s final frontier is the human heart with all its masks and motives and that is something that it will never be able to change. The type writer is gone; but the fingers tapping on the keyboards of laptops and touch screens have not changed. They have only shifted gears.