TRUE TO TYPE

My friend Muhammad Ali has put up an interesting post on stenography and dictating letters. There he has also narrated the evolution of the machines he used: from his father's old Remington manual typewriter whose keys he punched when he started out, to the feather-touch keyboard of the laptop he uses now. The journey has had several pit-stops where he used different variants: the clunky machine in the neighborhood typewriting institute, Olivetti manual, Brother electric and electronic typewriters, word-processors and now computers with the user-friendly speech-to-text feature.

That is the story of my life too, except that it was an Underwood instead of a Remington. And the typewriting institute bit — I did not attend one because there was none in the village I lived in. That lack of education shows: I still use my right middle finger for all the typing that I do and my left thumb for the "capital shift". I can clock a speed of 30 words per minute and though I cannot boast of a six-sigma level, my output is generally error-free.

These days I rely a lot on the speech-to-text feature both in English and Malayalam and have attained about 90% accuracy. The problem is that I have to be on the lookout for the gaffes like FACE for PHASE (and vice versa) and "The penis mightier than the sword."

I was in my early twenties when I had my first stenographer (That does sound pompous! He was actually the only one in the department I was attached to and, truth to tell, was shared by the three officers senior to me; I only tagged along!) Shesha Iyer (Swamy to everyone), the epitome of competence in his chosen field, had barely one year to retire. Having been with the organisation for thirty-seven long years, he was a fantastic resource person.

One of my bosses who was not too good at dictation often used to feel the urge to use the services of a stenographer, if only for ramping up his self-esteem. He would call Shesha Iyer, start dictating the letter number, date, addressee, salutation, subject line and after "With reference to your letter number (reading it aloud from the file) dated (again reading it aloud), comma, we have to advise as under, colon."

After this elaborate introduction, he would look up from the file and sit back in the swivel chair. He would then close the file and hand it over to the amanuensis with the words, "Swamy, you know what I have in mind. Please bring the draft reply." And Swami would do exactly that: an appropriate and correctly-worded reply would be on the boss' table in fewer than thirty minutes.

But I have digressed, for, I wanted to relate my experience with Shesha Iyer. Being a rookie, I would, at times, get stuck for the right word. From the context, he would guess what I had mind and supply me with the right phrase or word. The unsolicited, though welcome, input would interrupt the flow of my thought.

After a couple of such interventions, temporarily abandoning my usual respect for the grey hair and the bald pate, I asked him, "Swamy, are you, or am I, the one dictating the letter?"