Caught In Some Morass, Dom?

As a boy, I brooded over books, and my only concession to the real world was an interest in cricket, though I preferred reading about it to playing it. I envied my school friends, who were splendidly illiterate. These boys owned toolkits and meccano sets, and were as adept with their hands as other rough young primates are; whereas I, if exposed to sharp tools, managed to cut myself severely, and any structures I built with my meccano set instantly collapsed.

I believe that all mechanical devices hate a certain kind of person. No matter what he does to placate them, they will never respond with sympathy. They will go out of their way to annoy and frustrate him. I was born one of these people, fated to be a victim of technology and saddened by my stars.

By the time I was 15 years old, I spent much of my time writing poetry, and the rest thinking about it; often lost in a dream, I paid no attention whatever to the world around me. It was hardly the moment for my father to decide that I should learn how to drive. The instant result of this decision was that in 1953, somewhere along Marine Drive, I drove his brand new Buick into the back of stationary bus. My instructor and I were not irreparably damaged. The bus and the Buick were, and my driving lessons came to a sudden end. By now it was generally accepted by those who knew me that I could not be taught science, mechanics, or any other matters that would be useful in the technological age whose imminent arrival was predicted even in the 1950s.

One of the major irritants for me now that I have reached 60 in a period full of technological advances is to be asked how I react to these developments. The implication in these not wholly civil inquiries is that I must be behind the times. What my questioners seem not to realise is that there has never been any period in my life when, in so far as technology is concerned, I have not been behind the times. When in 1950 my father gave me his old Hermes portable typewriter, I was delighted. But when he attempted to teach me how to use it, I refused to learn. I acquired that typewriter half-a-century ago, and since then have used many other machines. But I have only ever typed with one finger, and I never managed to learn how to change a ribbon.

In recent years I have had my typewriters serviced at a shop in Mumbai, Fort area. The proprietor, a wise and kindly South Indian, told me he would soon close down his shop because most people now used computers. Typewriter parts would soon be unavailable. Guided by a friend, I got a computer. I was able to conceal this from other friends for weeks, because I didn’t want them to know. I found a young instructor, Pratik, who agreed to teach me. I insisted that all I wanted was to be able to write on the machine, and then correct what I wrote, no more. He was surprised by this, and that I typed with one finger. "I feel ashamed," he said, "so many things can be done with a computer. I don’t teach you even five per cent. I don’t do my duty."

Pratik attended a journalism class. He had read some of my writing, and he asked me to help him with one of his assignments. He showed me what he had written about a journey on a commuter train in Mumbai. "The teacher offers us his own ideas," he said. "I have used his ideas to write this." The piece he had written was awful. Much to Pratik’s gratitude, I rewrote it. A week later he came to me, looking puzzled. He averted his eyes and showed me the rewrite I had done for him, fiercely annotated in red ink. "Sir," he said, "I received zero marks for this essay. It’s the first time I have got zero marks." I consoled him by saying that he shouldn’t feel guilty about how little he was teaching me. "As teachers," I said, "we seem about the same."

But the changes in equipment continued to irritate me. In London a writer friend remarked, "Some people who change over to computers find their styles change. Not for the better either." I replied sourly that none of these innovations was for the better. He agreed; then as we parted said, "We’ve been out of the touch all these years. Here’s my e-mail address. What’s yours?" When I returned to Mumbai, I started to make inquires about acquiring this service. Vijay Mukhi, who pioneered the Internet in India, kindly sent me an instructor. He was a very young man, and he found it difficult to set up the system. One night he came with another computer expert, also very young, and they conversed in a strange dialect made up of technological terms.

It was like some secret code only known to a few conspirators; it seemed unlikely that anything significant or beautiful could ever be said in those words. Eventually, speaking in ordinary English, the two young men told me that my telephone line was faulty and would have to be reconnected. I didn’t understand how my telephone came into it; they explained kindly, as to a child. Finally I suppose I shall have an e-mail address, like everyone else. That is what I object to in technological progress; it herds people together at the lowest common denominator; clones them, vulgarises them. Quality has been removed from human life, not added to it, by new technologies that come from Orwellian nightmares and are in some senses imposed on one.

I committed myself to a premature millennium resolution last week, and have not smoked since. This has made me simultaneously grumpy and confused, and perhaps it shows in this article. I am a child of the 20th century, the last in which some places and people, once discovered, were destroyed by the same technology which will rule the century to come. I recall a discussion I had in the ‘70s with the great anthropologist and explorer Margaret Mead. I was fairly young and she was over 80. I told her about a recent visit to a cannibal tribe in West Irian. She had been there two decades before I had. "All the men wore penis sheathes then," she said. "Now you say some wear shorts."

She used to carry a long Masai shepherd’s crook, which she banged on the floor of the restaurant we were in. "In another 20 years," she said, "they’ll be wearing suits and their ambitions will be connected with money. Progress is about that, my boy. It’s nothing to do with improving life. It always comes when businessmen and scientists smell money at the same time. And then it kills." Last year I met a rich American poetess who had recently visited the valley I discussed with Margaret in the ‘70s. She had gone as a tourist and she had stayed in a hotel. The great mountain forests had been felled, and paper mills built along the rivers. "But the local people are making money," she said. I suppose Margaret would have asked if they were wearing suits.