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Having recently completed my 67th rain-and-shine “mausam” on this side of God’s Blessed Earth, I’m one of the old-timers still engaged in the scribing profession, true, but not old enough as my much older seniors who literally began by pushing their pens and wrote their verses and essays on parchments. They rested and spread the foolscap plain paper or lined stationery on the right knee and diligently calligraphed the blank space with their inked nibs of Chinese fountain pens. Many of them are still around: Satya Mohan Joshi, Madhav Prasad Ghimire, Shyam Das Vaishnav, Madan Mani Dixit, Indra Bahadur Rai, Kamal Mani Dixit, Ram Hari Sharma, Jagadish Shumsher, Bhairab Risal et al.Their parents wrote in even more rudimentary mode: Quills or bamboo points dipped in homemade oil-and-soot solution, or locally obtained vegetable dyes or berries squeezed into dark juice for ink. Thus, these men (mostly men) filled the lokta paper with their tamsuks, kavita, rachana, nibandha, katha, natak and upanyas. Adikabi Bhanu Bhakta Acharya and his biographer Moti Ram Bhatta also surely wrote in this fashion. Up until their times, these Nepalis were literally pen pushers who used their knees as writing desks.
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Let’s fast-forward ourselves to the 1960s. Twentieth Century bureaucracy had arrived in Nepal, and modern office system was the order of the day in the capital city of Kathmandu. One of the office signatures was the machine called typewriter, or “tankan” in Sanskrit Nepali. A typical office typewriter was a huge one-“dharni” Remington machine. Typing skills were known as “tankan kala,” but an office typist was known as “taipis.” With the advent of this era, it mostly did away with hand- or “hen”-writing, and introduced a comprehensively uniform recordkeeping and correspondence system in Nepal.
The “taipis” world was mostly populated by females, usually late-teen girls or young women, ideally SLC-pass, and mostly single. They were a sight to behold in any government office because of the clout they possessed and demonstrated. Mostly semiliterate and from the Kathmandu Valley, these ladies were femme fatale, in that they made their senior-most “hakim”s dance around their gaudily polished fingernails, or skewer them in the twin-braided and beribboned curls, or force them to squirm indefinitely behind their office saris. One typical instance:
Suppose the Secretary of the Ministry wanted a “Most Urgent” letter typed and placed on his table for his signature. It was the duty of his PA (personal assistant), a Section Officer in rank, no less, to often visit the typist’s cubicle to see that the document was prepared neatly and professionally, and in record time, without giving his boss any excuse to show his displeasure at any undue delay. But the loaded dice was always in the hands of the typist who went to her outermost limits to bargain and negotiate with the Section Officer for favors, and the SO had to coax, cajole and threaten the vixen.
Often, these comely and aggressive women received gifts of “lipistik” and “lali-pawdar” and saris from their upper-tier bosses. Many a filmy romance bloomed between the two classes of employees and even some scandalous episodes did the grapevines.
The office culture of this particular school was so jaded that even Radio Nepal had produced a couple of very popular “rupak”-s (soap dramas) based on a hakim and his department typist. The broadcasts, themed along by matching hit songs of the day, were laced with suggestive dialogues, interspersed with innuendos, tinged with unfulfilled fantasies, and unrequited desires. In one episode, the hakim is successful in having his sadistic and ambitious typist transferred, only to be more tormented by another smarter one who replaces the previous one.
The same thing happened to writers and journalists, too, but only to minor extents. Their handwritten manuscripts were handled by editors, and the copies had to be deciphered by knowledgeable typists. Some one-way favors were made in the process, though the practice was not at the industrial scales as seen in the government and public sector.
The above was about the barbell-heavy Remington machine which was called manual typewriter. Carbon copies were made for different files, and an eraser was indispensable to rub off misspellings. Then there came the electric typewriter, then an electronic one. German correction stickers also appeared in the market, then the white ink in correction pens.
The typewriter ruled Nepal for more than 30 years, and the Panchayat Raj is synonymous with Remington manuals.
I’ve used all three types of typewriters. The first one was a hefty Olympia manual, the electric one was a compact Brother, and the electronic one was a big-framed Ingersoll-Rand, this one with auto correction tabs. Finally, I bought a light and compact manual Brother because the Xerox copier machine had arrived, revolutionizing information dissemination and replacing the Gestetner cyclostyle printer. I still have the last Brother, albeit unused since 1990.
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Yes, the year 1990 is also crucial in Nepal for at least two reasons. Following the introduction of telex and facsimile technology in the 1980s, 1990 brought the computer revolution in Nepal, along with the People’s Revolution for Democracy, Chapter I.
As working journalist and editor, the first computer I used since 1991 was called WordPerfect in IBM Compatible. Though it had a mouse for maneuver, users mostly had to resort to keyboard operation: press ctrl+alt-shift and Ecs/F1 etc for page margins and scripting. But it was a piece of cake compared to our recent typewriterly past.
Even then, one had to slog for references and additional information by visiting libraries and such knowledge depots. The situation remained the same until Bill Gates’ Microsoft Word swept the world. Today, my computer is an all-in-one assistant and microsecond slave for me. One example:
It happened in 2000 between Samrat Upadhyay in the US and me in Kathmandu. He and Manjushree Thapa had selected a short story of mine to be published in the Manoa Magazine of Hawaii. I posted my manuscript to Samrat via my email. This took hardly 10 seconds. In the old days of postage stamps, it would’ve taken 12-15 days (!) for similar one-way traffic. Samrat returned my text the same evening through his email. I made the required editorial adjustments and e-reverted to him the next day with my final copy. In four working days of e-interactions, the editing was done to everyone’s satisfaction:
The old postal system would’ve taken no less than eight weeks for the same job between Ohio and Kathmandu. What more can I say?
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But there are more to be said, most especially to the more fortunate youngsters of Nepal who, from their post-toddler days, have had the computer mouse for a toy and the mouse pad for diaper. You have your computer with all the facilities you need. I, for one, have WordWeb Pro for suitable word meanings and expressions – synonyms, antonyms, and all that. The WordWeb also advises me to refer to Wikipedia for other details, and it’s there at my service on one click.
This is one way how one obtains information today. Computer-wise, I would call it my version of artificial intelligence gathering. But for genuine information, one still must do her own footwork and fieldwork, so one may accumulate true knowledge, not mere secondhand information. With experience and age, the same corpus of information and knowledge leads to timely wisdom, realization, liberal thinking, and then enlightenment, for a better world. The dynamism continues with each succeeding day.
This, then, should be the clarion call for Nepal’s educated young population in the New Year 2011. For, despite such techno-savvies and instant shortcuts, are we any better in our wordy craft today? That’s perhaps why, should we have doubts, there’s The Groupon Academy to help both veterans and novices in bettering one’s writing finesse. Do check Groupon out in 2011!
May you all, thereby, have an illuminating adventure, and a brave new world to navigate in ideal expressions, constructive journalism, and fine creative writing!
What more can I say? More, much more – as you yourselves shall discover!
Meanwhile, here’s wishing you all a Happy New Year 2011!
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