All my professional life, I had done my stories on the good old typewriter and developed high speed that baffled even professional typists who got trained at some ‘Learn typing & shorthand’ school.

In the office, I was given a big-sized typewriter of my choice. But I bought for my exclusive use a ‘feather weight’ tiny piece for carrying in flights during official tours. The toy-like typewriter being uncommon those days, I sometimes felt like flaunting it before the have-nots.

“Baby”, as I used to call it, got from me all the care that a baby deserved. It served me well till my last few years in office. By that time, the gadget called PC (personal computer) had invaded work places. Its entry in my office coincided with my exit. But to me, it was no match for my “Baby”.

As luck would have it, shortly afterwards, a ‘PC’ made an unceremonious entry in my house, courtesy my working daughter who insisted that it was a wonder gadget — “Something you would love to work on, Papa”.

Being at least five times the size of my “Baby” typewriter, the machine sat on my table like a stubborn child refusing to come down. The more my daughter tried to win me over in favour of the PC the more I disliked it. The PC was to her what my tiny typewriter was to me.

What I perceived as her addiction to the PC started worrying me. But I was silenced on the plea that I was ignorant of the merits of the new-age gadgets. One day, succumbing to pressure, I reluctantly agreed to learn working on it under my daughter (child is the father of man?). By the way, like me, she had also not gone to any computer training centre.

Honestly speaking, in the initial stage of my computer training, due to my phobia — or call it fear — I often felt that if I pressed some wrong key, a clenched fist would come out of the screen and punch me in the face. So, I kept a safe distance.

Now, the happy news: Gradually, I fell in love with the ‘PC’. Today, I am a convert and would like to honour whoever invented this wonderful machine. I spend considerable time writing articles like this one, deal with emails and do surfing. Now, I keep quiet when my daughter asks if I have also become a computer “addict”.

In retrospect, I found my “Baby” typewriter was the ‘PC’s’ poor cousin for several reasons. The ‘PC’ eliminated the frequent rubbing of eraser on wrongly typed matter. In ‘PC’. ‘Delete’ did it without leaving the eraser’s shaving. Days are gone when I had to press a key to type a capital letter. ‘PC’ started every new sentence with a capital letter and ’Shift’ gave more. What a relief!

No more putting papers with carbon paper into the typewriter or sliding the roller left and right to type out a fresh line. The ‘PC’ took care of this without my knowledge. “Great”, I exclaimed when I saw it first time.

(By the way, I have graduated from a ‘PC’ to a laptop.)

My typewriter never told me about a wrongly spelt word. My daughter’s laptop underlines it in red like our English teacher did at school. But today, it might cause embarrassment in front of youngsters.

For me, it was a discovery that this modern-time gadget has come as a great relief to people who did not bother about grammatical errors. Now they ask the machine and it corrects their English. This reminds me of a friend who was known for committing spelling and grammatical mistakes. He surprised his friends with correct usage in his communication, courtesy the computer.

But nothing could match the wonderful skills of what my daughter introduced to me as ”Google uncle”. Her advice: Just open the internet and you would get from “him” any information you want on anything under the sun within seconds.

I found that “Google uncle” was more than an encyclopedia who had virtually eliminated the need for stacking reference material on the shelf. Ask him about the universe, mythology, history, mountains, the seas, vanishing tribes, birds and animals and what not! He gives tips on even strictly personal questions.

But Google is certainly not a lost-and-found office yet, as a lady from our neighbourhood seemed to suggest. Very innocently she asked: ”Can Google uncle tell where I have misplaced my bunch of keys?”

Can anybody answer this because, I am sure Google uncle won’t?

Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.