KHAKI Talk 25: #ClicketyClack - India's Typewriter Tales by Chirodeep Chaudhuri

In October 2009, the last typewriter rolled out of the Godrej & Boyce manufacturing plant at Shirwal, near Pune. And so, a chapter ended. This, in many ways, was like the final nail in the coffin for a technology and a machine which in its day came to symbolise modernity. Ironically, the typewriter, in India, continues to fight a losing battle against another machine which today has come to stand for everything modern – the computer. In our Online Talk #ClicketyClack, photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri, who has explored this fast disappearing world of the manual typewriters in India with Godrej Archives and documented the last gasps of breath, takes us through the stories he gathered and introduces us to the die-hard fans, lovers and cranks who are keeping it alive, if only on life-support.

In his two-and-a-half decade career Chirodeep Chaudhuri has worn many hats – starting out in advertising as a visualiser, then switching careers as a photojournalist and then as an Editor of Photography. His most recent avatar though has been as the author of the critically feted book ‘A Village In Bengal: Photographs and an Essay’, a result of his 13-year long engagement with his ancestral village in West Bengal. He is also the co-author of the book ‘With Great Truth & Regard: The History of the Typewriter in India’.

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