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A feel of the Hindi/English keyboard invented by Dr Mahesh Jayachandra.

G.R.N. Somashekar

Say it your own way.

Preethi J

The pink plastic letters stuck on the top-left of each key of the keyboard stand bright against the factory cream colour. Colleagues passing by the cabin walk over to admire the Hindi lettering. “Why didn’t anybody think of this before?” say many.

This is a Hindi/English keyboard invented by Bangalorean scientist Dr Mahesh Jayachandra. He designed it for children who needed an easy Indian language keyboard.

“Hindi is a mandatory school subject for a majority of Indian children. Computer makers consult computer-savvy Indians (both in India and outside) who live in an English-centric, Sand Hill Road universe and are unaware of the practical usage of Indic computing. First-time PC users will find this a boon,” he says.

The keyboard is licensed by the US-based Kalibonca LLC, which expects it to be a huge hit with NRI children.

“The NRI community is about 2.5 to 3million strong in the US. The NRI population in the rest of the world is about 30 million.

Here in the US, many NRIs want their American children to learn Indian languages. We are confident that NRI families will see the utility of our product. They will be able to easily communicate with relatives in India with e-mail and instant messaging in Hindi.

It has been evaluated by the Hindi language department of a US University and received positive reviews. In India, we estimate a pent-up demand for 44 million units,” says a Kalibonca spokesperson.

Kalibonca plans to introduce kits for other Indian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi/Gurmukhi, etc) and computing devices for the Indic Computing market soon.

Mallya Aditi International School in Bangalore will be receiving it for testing shortly. Chintan Bakshi (COO) of United Villages, India, says he took the keyboard to villages in Orissa, but since the primary language there is Oriya and not Hindi, he could not judge its effect. He is planning to take it to Rajasthan.

When you open up a document and start typing, English letters of the alphabet flow onto the screen. But with a simple tap of the Caps Lock button, the Hindi keyboard comes alive. The pink letters pasted below each letter of the alphabet on the keyboard can now be used. Arranged in the Hindi alphabetical order (k, kh,ga, gha..), the keyboard is instinctively simple to use and easy to learn. Numbers are placed on the right hand corner.

The keyboard comes with a Linux-based CD and can be installed within minutes. You plug the keyboard in, pop it into the CD drive and restart the PC. The PC must be made to run from the CDROM. It immediately loads a Linux KDE desktop (quite plain and simple, similar to the Windows desktop screen, with a simple blue background and basic icons.

All the icons pop up a Hindi name when you point the cursor to them. The CD doesn’t perform any installation and the user is immediately transported into a Hindi OS.

The applications were chosen to suit a country where being computer-savvy is a shortcut to a steady income.

Proficiency in ‘Office’ kind of programs is in demand here. Simple programs such as Open Office (similar to Microsoft’s Office suite), and a calculator have been included, along with a basic notebook application called K-Write.

The desktop has two panels or toolbars at the top and bottom with a total of 18 icons for various programs — including a world clock, Internet browser and a planetarium. The file explorer is called ‘ghar’ or home. This lets you save to the CDROM as well as to the PC you are working on. You can ‘nakal’ (copy) text just like on any other PC, and hit ‘baahar jayiye’ to exit applications.

The Internet browser opens to a default Wiki search engine. Instant messaging is also offered — more popularly called ‘chatting’, the Hindi name becomes a smile inducing ‘gupshup window.’

“Besides food, India is known for its highly skilled IT workers. The fact that Indians do not have a way to easily compute in their languages is truly astounding and unbelievable to us,” says the Kalibonca spokesperson.

LOGO has been included to introduce the user to basics of programming . “Computers are very poweful tools and for the most part, are under-utilised as there are no such keyboards,” she says. The keyboard is minimal and manufactured by GE. It requires a PC with a CDROM drive and a minimum of 256 MB RAM (memory), though 512 MB is recommended. It is available for purchase at Kalibonca’s Web site for $99.99 (Rs 4000).

preethij@thehindu.co.in

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