Dear iPad, I know my its from it's. Do you?

We have an ongoing battle, my iPad and I. Make no mistake, I love the little devil, it sits sweetly on my lap, wherever I choose to rest my butt, and I can make it do my bidding. Write, revise, edit, and sometimes if the wifi is kind, send or chat too! But that is not the end of the story. What I cannot understand is how I failed to notice when  I first acquired it, that the cutie pie had the makings of a little monster. With a gallon sized will all it’s own. [caption id=“attachment_261942” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“So Sachin becomes succinct, Ravi becomes rabbi and by the time I have finished with my manuscript, and read it over I could well have written it in gobbledegook. AFP”]  [/caption] Did you see that? The little apostrophe in it’s. There, again. This is what I mean. I wonder which newly literate in English data inputter ( see this time I won, it could not handle that word) keyed in the dictionary for this gadget. Apple, in some cost saving measure must have ensured it got the guy cheap, and did not equip him with a dictionary or a handbook of English usage either. So every  its becomes it’s. There are other battles. There’s this prejudice against proper names, especially Indian ones. Under normal circumstances, the gadget should underline a word it finds unfamiliar. But here I sense a distinct case of real dislike. So Sachin becomes succinct, Ravi becomes rabbi and by the time I have finished with my manuscript, and read it over I could well have written it in gobbledegook. Incidentally, the monster knows the word gobbledegook… do you wonder why? I think the most unnerving experience I can remember was when I was trying to copy some songs from Hindi films in Roman script. I cannot tell you the result of what was really almost an hour of work. Completely engrossed in the typing, I quite ignored checking what was being transferred on to the screen. And after half an hour of painstaking work, trying to get every Hindi word articulated with the right choice of letters, I sat back to look at the fruits of my labour. It is no exaggeration to say that the sweat on my brow turned to pure ice. What in mundane terms is called cold sweat was an understatement compared to what I experienced. The first line read like this: tum nay Jane kiss Jane me ko gay . Instead of the beautifully sad love song full of longing , sung for Sazaa by Lata to SD  Burman’s music, i had something that sounded like soft porn in Thai. The simple task of writing title names when writing my stories on hindi films, is another agonising saga. Take for example this sentence: Joy mukherjee in love in simla was a novice, but by phirozewahi dilhi layer hoot he had become a star in his own right. Luckily for me, years of training at editing helped me spot the change effected by the iPad’s wily mind, and I was saved from being written off as a gibbering idiot by the editor I sent the story to. There have been other narrow escapes, but I think by now you get the gist. Other lurking agents of sabotage include the machine’s abhorrence of the capital letter. Many a time have I tried to emphasise a word with a capital letter, but my little friend will have none of it. By the time I have shifted my gaze to the next word, presto, it has changed it back to lower case. A case of capitalophobia, you  think? As for the pride it takes in being all American, that is to me quite quite misguided, I think, considering its incorrect understanding of what even the Americans will not stoop to do with the language they inherited from their erstwhile countrymen. But the pride is there, and stands like a sentry, not allowing me to exercise my fundamental right to spell words the English way. Considering I am writing in English, and not American, I think this is very unfair. But every organise has to be reorganized, and it ends up with my text being disorganized. You understand the complication of it I am sure. Lastly, there is this subversive move to put me in my place. Just when I think I have tamed the beast, it slips in a quiet blow. When I am not watching, it changes my capital I into  lower case. Fine if I were a poet, but a pretty sad commentary for a journalist, if one of them slips past and heads to an editor as part of my copy! But I am not giving up. I write every day on my  iPad: mails, stories, and this week I have decided that the iPad shall be my chosen instrument to record the chapters of my new book, as I write it. Hopefully, by constant use, I shall exert mind over matter, and organise the workings of this little beast’s mind to concur with my own. Till then, the battle lines remain drawn, and i shall pardon it for it’s errors for it knows not what it does.