The Second encounter

The next encounter was in the unlikely place where my mother worked, the office of her college where she taught English, the D. G. Vaishnav College. I knew that she was a professor in the college because I had this picture that teachers taught in schools and professors taught in colleges. I didn’t find her English different (it obviously should be different because she had devoted her entire life to English and she should be able to use it better than other ordinary and under-educated English speaking people) because I always understood what she said in English and because she didn’t have an accent which was different from the teachers in my school. The subtle difference I missed was in the vocabulary as the teachers in my school used very few words and my mother had a much larger choice of words to phrase her sentences. I didn’t spot the difference as I understood both the normal English spoken in my school and the vocabulary rich English of my mother with ease.

Coming back to my second encounter, it was a situation when my mother couldn’t leave me home or maybe she thought that I could get familiar with other computers which were used in her college. In those days the office of the college was essentially a large hall with portraits of the former principals of the college, hung above the windows in an impressive array. The interior chambers which were devoted to non-administrative tasks like printing and typing, were not as impressive as the large office hall. Frankly it was spooky as many of these chambers were dark and there was a distinct heavy smell of ink in the air addled with the smell of dust and paper. I always assumed that these inner chambers of the office perfectly described the dungeons in medieval times. There were about three computers in one of the rooms adjacent to a handful of typewriters and walls which seemed to be made of neatly stacked paper which must have been ancient as they had accumulated a lot of dust.

I remember being introduced to a young lad called Satish who must have handled computers proficiently to be employed in the college. I was also introduced to two typists called Ms. Leena and MS. Sujanya who went crazy looking at me, exclaiming that I was a cute kid. All of them obviously had a lot of respect for my mother as she treated them much like her friends rather than colleagues. I always thought that men were always the ones who worked hard and my father was the best example as he was pretty absent the whole day when I was home, obviously working hard in his office and he was always tired when he came home and some times a sour mood would also be an obvious, additional outcome of a taxing day in the office. Apparently I was wrong as my mother was working as hard as my father was and she was also respected by everyone in her college.

Being proud of my mother, with a puffed up chest, I made my way to one of the stools which was empty and peered into the computer. And there it was, the Command Prompt. Satish anna came beside me and taught me some basic commands in DOS, like changing directories, changing the system time, opening documents and opening different applications. I absorbed these weird commands like parched earth would water. Although the approach was initially more technical which was what I intended to learn, I got bored. I asked him whether there were any games on the computer and to my disappointment he said that there weren’t any. He also said that the computers that had games were used by other typists and staff members to update and maintain college records. I kicked myself for assuming that the computers would be unused in a bustling place like this college and that people would just be sitting ducks and indulging in serious gossip.

I returned my attention to the computer in front of me and I managed to open WordStar which was the common word processor in DOS at that time. As it was a word processor, the only thing I could think of was to type some sentences in it, a logical approach which I had developed like a sixth sense. I got bored as I realized that the only thing I could achieve out of it was to hone my skills in typing relative to speed and fluency. By the time I finished a sizable paragraph, both Ms. Leena and Ms. Sujanya had crept behind me as praised that I had a good typing skill, “for a kid” I assumed completing their compliment in my head. They also said that the lunch hour had commenced which meant that the computers which were previously worked on would be idle. They offered to share their lunch with me, which was sweet of them, but I refused.

With their permission, I went to their computers and stared at what they called as the screen saver. This concept was new to me and I was partly afraid to disturb it and partly awed by the random lines which changed their shape and colours. With a little encouragement, I nudged the mouse which was again new to me as DOS systems seldom needed a mouse, and most of the input was done from the keyboard. The Screensaver disappeared and in contrast to the Black & White screens of DOS which was mostly black because of the background, there was a beautiful coloured picture which was called the wallpaper with tiny objects (I later learnt that these objects were Icons) which were arranged to the left side of the screen. Although I was getting better with using keyboard shortcuts and commands at that point of time, I had no idea whether the same commands would work in this new system. I was able to guess that the mouse would be the tool which could help me navigate in this new interface. The mouse was placed to the right of the keyboard and I had to sit at the edge of my chair to be able to use it. The whole setup became obvious to me that the mouse was for a right handed person and the index finger being more dexterous than the middle finger, the left click would be more common than the right click. Easy as it was, I never gave a thought to the concept of double-clicking. I was just experimenting with different combinations of left and right clicks. The structure of the directory tree from My computer became very obvious because I used to imagine the concept of folders and files as envelopes within envelopes often resorting to imagining a connected network of folders in my mind. Now given the graphical representation of the files and folders and a directory map provided when we use the explore feature, it became a pleasure to use. Another pleasing feature was that I did not need to enter lengthy commands to open and work on files and traversal was very easy with the help of the mouse. While I made my way through the C drive, I found many programs including Microsoft Paint, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft word, etc. MS Paint was interesting because I was an amateur artist at that time, but I was not very good at drawing with a mouse, while looking at the screen, this needed a different hand – eye coordination. After a bunch of drawings which were basically crude and ugly (they could pass for abstract art, I guess), I continued on my mission to find Games on the computer. By the time both Leena akka and Sujanya akka told me that there were games on the D drive. So I stopped my search and proceeded as they directed. If I had continued with my search which I did later, I would have ended with the games which came with the Windows package like Freecell, Solitaire, Pinball, etc. In the D drive, inside the games folder, I found the games I was looking for.

There was obviously the Classic Pacman only it was called GOBman in this computer. I also found three other games Mario, Dave and Prince. I had already played Pacman enough and I wanted to give the new games a try. So I started with Dave and found the Game kiddish (I know I should'nt be complaining as I was a kid back then, but hey, kiddish is kiddish) although it had more graphics than Pacman. I didn’t know the controls as I knew only the direction keys. So I asked the ladies how to play the game and they hinted that the spacebar, alt, shift and the ctrl keys might help. Sure enough I put this new knowledge to test, obviously testing the keys individually first and then blending them in different combinations to control little Dave around the 2D maze. Soon I assumed that I had reached the saturation point where I could proceed no further in the game. I switched to Mario. The graphics seemed much better than Dave, mostly because the resolution and number of colours used to represent the environment was much more. Again after playing Mario for a while, I came to the same saturation point, when I could play no more. With one more game to try out, I took a break and went inquiring what my mother was up to and whether I had enough time to play for some more time. I wanted to do this because I didn’t want to get attached to the game, that I would feel bad when I left it half way, leaving it ‘unconquered’. After being assured that my mother would find me with the computer, I turned my attention to the Game Prince. But that’s another story altogether. All this, took place in a short period of time, but the intensity with which I absorbed the situation made this seem longer than what it actually was.