John and Sam were in corporation office. John opened the map roll in his hand on the table in front of one of the corporation officer. It was a city map on which were made five red marks and a circle was drawn through those marks.
“Mr. Peterson we are in need of the list of the residents names living in this area and whose names start with ‘Y’” John said indicating towards the fifth red mark.
“In this area and starting with ‘Y’... I think we need to take the help of the computer for this purpose” Mr. Peterson said.
He got up, “Come with me”
Peterson took them to the computer center, occupied with four-five cubicles.
Staff was engrossed in their work sitting in their respective cubicles. The staff was mainly young girls in their twenties. Mr. Peterson took them to one of the cubicles. A girl in bob cut was working there. She was busy, her delicate hands were operating keyboard and mouse, and eyes were glued at monitor through her spectacles.
“Mary these are officers from police department, they are in need of a list of some residents” Mr. Peterson said.
John unrolled the rolled map in his hand in front of the girl.
“Living in this area..” John pointed to the red mark on the map.
“ ...And first names starting with ‘y’” John continued.
The girl glanced at John and Sam. She carefully looked at the cross and said, “ Sure sir ... just a minute”
She scribbled three-four names of the colony on the paper in front of her, looking at the red mark indicated by John. She double clicked swiftly on one of the icons on her desktop. A Software opened on the monitor. She ventured through various menus and options in those menus and lastly selected one of those. She typed ‘Y*’ in one of the text box, and typed the area names separated by coma in other text box. Rather than looking at what she was typing it was more pleasant to look at the swift movements of her delicate fingers, nails polished in skinny red color.
Now just one more click...
Lastly she clicked on ‘Find’ button.
‘Finding’ – a messaged appeared on the monitor.
If computer would not have been invented, the information they needed was very difficult to find...
John thought.
And what is computer? - a game of zeros and ones. The zero came here too...
Suddenly names of the residents appeared on the monitor with their respective addresses.
“Twenty nine people!” words came through Sam’s open mouth.
“ Out of them can we find who stays on tenth floor?” John asked.
“ Tenth floor? With the help of computer we can find .. but I think... it will be more convenient if we find it manually” Mary said.
With swift and magical movements of her fingers she gave a print command. A printer kept aside came into an action and printed the list of twenty nine residents. As Mary took the print in her hand, Sam and John ducked forward to go through the list. In the address field somewhere the floor was mentioned as a part of the flat number, somewhere it was mentioned separately, and somewhere it was mentioned using roman numbers. They realized how it was difficult to find out the residents on the tenth floor with the help of the computer. John ticked three names in the print.
John shook hand with Mary and Peterson
“ Thank you Mary... Thank you Peterson... you have really made our job easy.. thanks!”
“ You are welcome”
John and Sam left the building in hurry carrying the print in one hand.
Continued …
Original Novel by Sunil Doiphode
English Version by Mugdha Apte
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