The gadget that wrote

(March 2006)

He sat at his worktable, looking with admiration at the wonderful piece of gadgetry that had been entrusted to him. He wiped a drop of sweat off his brow and continued to wipe with his oil-tinged cloth the semicircular array of metallic levers. In the background, the little radio that he had assembled one dreary weekend made whirring noises that resembled a popular song. Naresh brought out a slim box from a drawer, and from it, a carefully preserved ear-bud of dubious quality (he had bought a pack of hundred at a traffic signal). He dipped it in a bit of anti-corrosive fluid and began to clean the little serrations that crowned the aforesaid metallic levers, smiling to himself as he realised that he could recognise a laterally inverted letter in his sleep. Here, in the loop of a 'b' was a small clot of dirt, which was causing smudges of ink on the paper. There, nestling in the hook of the question mark, was another grain of dust. Having cleaned all the letters, digits and punctuation marks to a sparkle, Naresh oiled the rails of the carriage. He pushed the carriage left and right, making sure the motion was smooth, until the little hammer at the bottom of the rails coiled itself and struck a Ting! to signal that the end of a line had been reached. He tried the knobs on the carriage; he made sure the keys at the front were sparkling white. Give him one of these works of art any day, he could repair it no matter what was wrong with it. The pang of joy he felt when one of them went back to its former days of glory, typing line upon line of sparkling text on a clean white sheet of paper, in this, the age of ever-cheaper printers!