The typing experience (STORY BY S.SALIM KUMAR)

The typing experience

Rajesh was sitting idle as nobody came for typing the documents.  Other    typists were doing well as they got some complicated account sheets to do.  It was a typing centre  where  Rajesh   joined one week ago. 

Rajesh was watching the mob moving on the road.  Somebody with colourful turbans, ladies in  the veil, young people with their fashions.   Cycle  rickshaws were moving everywhere. The camel carts carry everything from sand to computers. Three wheeled tempos ruled the roads with dark smoke and irritating  sound  and they  are packed with passengers . 

Sometimes the wind blow and deposited dust everywhere.  He was thinking about his village, just before a week he left, after his marriage.   .  This is the first time he is doing the job typing.  He don’t know Hindi to speak. But he spoke little English which enough to communicate with the owner of the typing centre and other staff. 

Rajesh took the Hindi news paper from the owner's table and started reading..  Front page was filled with news from Punjab, the burning villages, invasion  of terrorists.  He scanned all the news and again started reading, now the advertisements.  His friends Murali and Bhagavan Das were busy in typing the account sheets from a Chartered Accountant.

Then came two people, both were Sardarjis.  One was in his thirties with   thick and black beards, decently tied turban, and having the bangle of steel and a small Kripan chained to his belt.  Black Pants and a coffee colour shirt inserted. The other Sardarji was at his twenties, and  having shade of newly emerging face hairs here and there.   Owner of the typing centre instructed Rajesh to attend them and he did so.

The duo wanted to type a list from a file which they brought with them.  Name of a  Farmers  co-operative Society was written on the file cover and they took two sheets of papers.   They want one plus three copies of the list.  Rajesh set four white papers on the typewriter and searched for carbons.  But the elder person told him that he will provide carbon papers and  insisted Rajesh to use those only.

 The list was of farmers who are members of that co-operative society which was functioning in Gurdaspur district of Punjab.  The list included name and addresses of farmers from Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran districts of Punjab. 

While typing the list, Rajesh surprised that what are these Sardarjis doing with a list of farmers from the districts which are fiercely  affected by terrorism.  Are they trying to rehabilitate the farmers who  lost their wealth and relatives during the operations by the extremists  or by police actions ? Why these people brought their own carbon ?  what ever may be the reasons, he was not bothered about  those things.  He will get the half   the amount whatever the owner charged from the customers. 

Rajesh completed the list within minutes and gave the copies to the Sardarjis, and he thought that they will drop the carbon papers there.  But they wanted back the carbon papers and took them.  They paid the money and went away.  But Rajesh was thinking what they are doing with a list of farmers of the  terror affected districts ?  He was thinking the same till the next customer came.

After some days while Rajesh was reading the Hindi Newspaper Punjab Kesari he had seen some names of the victims of terrorism in Tarn Taran district.  He saw two names similar to the names he typed in the list which  he typed   for the Sardarjis.  Some places were also similar.  But he had lot of work to do, as a writer from the city brought a 200 page work to type.  He was fully engaged in that work, as that  was   the  author’s memories of  the  last fifty years in the Pink City. Rajesh typed it with full enthusiasm, and he got no time to think other things, as the work was interesting and influencing him.

After seven years of that small event, Rajesh was working with an office.  It was   summer and the Pink City was  hot. News about  extremism in Punjab  was equal to nothing as the ruling forces combed out   terrorism from the land of wheat and milk.

One day immediately the Pink city was discussing about Terrorists of Punjab, as a business magnet dealing with diamonds was kidnapped by some Punjabi terrorists.  People surprised.  When everybody even the Punjabis had forgotten about terrorists  what is happening in Rajasthan    The terrorists want to release  some of their  associates who are in jail.  

The kidnapped  business magnet was the son of a national level politician from Rajasthan.  Ruling party and opposition started their own versions of  allegations each other  on law and order issues   and the political arena became hot.

Rajesh was keenly observing the news items, and sometimes he remembered the   sardarjis, who came to type a list of some farmers.

For one week people were discussing and fearing   new events of terrorism in the city.  The crisis was so complicated, as the Rajasthan Police never faced a situation like this.  But the police was fortunate, that one morning they got a telephone call from a milkman in the model town area of Jaipur sub-urban.  The milkman informed that when he was supplying milk to one person in a particular house of that area, he saw a machine gun inside the long shirt of that man, and he is suspected to be a man of Punjabi origin.

Police with their commandoes fenced the area and ordered the man to surrender. He and his friends responded with fire. After hours of firing the  person along with one associate  were shot dead by the police.  The kidnapped business man was released from the same house.

Next  morning the news papers hit the stands with a bang.  The businessman was successfully released and the terrorist shot dead.  Photos of the dreaded terrorist shot dead was appeared in all the papers. 

Rajesh took the paper only to be shocked, and immediately he was thinking  about the list typed by him for the sardarjis, seven years back.  It was the same elder Sardarji, who made typed the list of farmers under the name of a co-operative society.  He was the terrorist rocked the city for a week, and seven years ago he used Rajesh to type hit list.  Rajesh was thinking about those farmers who were killed as per the list typed by him.