In hindsight, he says he probably should have learned how to use a computer. He laughs, but the bitterness is barely hidden: “Now the time has come!” On a computer, letters and legal forms can be re-used endlessly, requiring only changes in dates and names. “The first time I saw the computer, I knew the typewriter would be finished one day,” he said. More than 20 years ago, Kumar realized that everything in the typing world would soon change dramatically. For the typists, things only get busy when all the computers are in use, or there’s an electricity outage. At 15 rupees a page, or about 20 cents, that barely pays for transportation to work, typewriter ribbons and an occasional tuneup from the complex’s last typewriter repairman. Now, there are just 10-15 pages a day for the hundreds of lawyers scurrying through the maze of buildings and corridors. Kumar (typist)” it says on a hand-painted sign hanging above what counts as his office, a rusted metal desk in the complex’s yard. We were working from morning until night,” he said, slouching in front of his manual Remington, a purple beret pulled down over his head to keep out the winter chill. Kumar worked for 41 years at Tis Hizari, raising two children on his pay. In India, the typewriter was never just a piece of office equipment. 16, 2017 photo, an old Remington 2000 typewriter lies covered in dust in New Delhi, India. “I come here only to pass the time,” Satinder Kumar said on a recent afternoon at Tis Hizari, New Delhi’s main court complex, where 50 or so typists earn a few dollars a day preparing rent agreements, sales contracts and other legal documents. There are long-outdated government regulations that, for now, help the typewriter cling to life. There are typing schools that, at least occasionally, are jammed with students. There are a handful of typewriter repairmen and stores selling spare parts. India still has a few thousand remaining professional typists. Plus, people do continue to send him typewriters to fix, though most of his work these days is selling supplies for copiers and laminating machines. “I still have a soft spot for them, and I don’t want to let it go.” There’s no future in this business.”įor now, only one thing keeps him in the business: “I’m a typewriter man,” he said. But after me, I don’t know what’s going to happen. “We thought this business would go on forever and ever,” said Chawla, a courtly man whose father founded the family company nearly 60 years ago, but whose own sons chose to avoid the typewriter business. But in one of the last places in the world where it remains a part of everyday life, twilight is at hand.Įven Sunil Chawla will tell you that, and he’s kept Chawla Typewriters going long after the profits disappeared. Looking around the cramped classrooms, you might think that the typewriter still has a future in India. It was a sign of education, of professional achievement, of women’s growing independence as they slowly entered the workforce.(Daily Star File Photo) on a Tuesday morning, when dozens of young Indians have arrived for morning classes at Anand Type, Shorthand and Keypunch College, and every battered Remington is clattering away. The end is coming, though admittedly it may not look that way at 10 a.m.
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