the answer to the clue of 6d, pushed me further back to the years 1977 and 1978, when I learnt both shorthand and typing at St. Ann’s Commercial Training Centre. I had passed the secondary examination in 1976, but could not continue further studies at that point of time due to acute poverty at home. I was under the care of my maternal grandmother since my early childhood and it was she only who nourished me and brought me up and even bore my educational expenses upto the secondary level. Since she could no longer afford to pay for my further education, I started giving more tuitions in order to earn some extra money which I accumulated and which helped me to take admission in Class XI, but only after two years, that is in 1978, but in the meanwhile, I had completed and passed the course in shorthand and typing that cost me only five rupees per month which I could easily afford to pay out of the money I earned. The skill certificate helped me to get a job in a small firm and again I hopped to another firm offering a better pay before I earned a secured job as a stenographer in a nationalised bank through a competitive examination and was appointed in February 1981. I worked thereat for my entire tenure of thirty-nine years; the last fourteen years being in the supervisory cadre including holding assignments in three branches as branch head and finally retiring in January 2020. But shorthand and I were made for each other. Post-retirement, I was able to secure another job as a senior private secretary on a contractual basis in a state government undertaking through a stenography test and an interview.
Daily Telegraph 30125