Stop press! The typewriter isn't dead!

In "Bombay Talkie," a much-loved Merchant Ivory film shot in 1970 and set in Mumbai, one of the memorable song-and-dance sequences takes place on a giant typewriter.

Women in canary yellow costumes dance daintily atop the large keys as they sing "typewriter, tip, tip, tip" in high-pitched unison.

Explaining the unusual dance prop, one character remarks: "We call it the fate machine" adding that "typewriter keys represent the keys of life. As we human beings dance on them we press down the keys and the story that is written is the story of our fate."

For all this romanticization of the typewriter, it is fitting that India was the last country in the world to produce office typewriters and is now selling off its final stock.

The writing on the wall

The future of India's "fate machine" was decided in 2009 when Godrej & Boyce stopped producing typewriters. The prestigious Indian manufacturing company, founded in 1897, now has less than 500 pieces for sale.

Back in 1955, Godrej & Boyce became the first Asian company to manufacture typewriters, which Jawaharlal Nehru saw as a symbol of independent India. In 1948, as Nehru pushed for greater industrialization, a large Indian industrial family, the Godrejs, began working on a typewriter.

Over the course of Godrej & Boyce's production, the company manufactured typewriters capable of typing in 40 languages and exported to countries like Morocco, Angola, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Mozambique, becoming the pride of the country.

Business reached its peak during the 1990s, when the company sold an average of 50,000 typewriters a year.

Milind Dukle, the general manager of operations at Godrej & Boyce, remembers that even during the golden years, the sense was that typewriters were nearing their end.

"I started working for the company in the 1990s, and back then people used to tell me that typewriters will die in two or three years -- it lasted a few more years than that but the writing was on the wall that computers were going to take over," he says.

Sure enough, in 2009 the company stopped producing office typewriters, which are heavier and larger than the portable variety.

"In 2000, the orders started going down as computer sales went up," says Dukle, whose main clients are government agencies.

"Closing the factory was a very simple decision. When the volume falls below a certain level it starts making losses. That's when you decide to close down -- it's based on economics."

When Godrej & Boyce put its office typewriters to rest, it was the last in the world to do so. Now the only typewriters which are still produced are the portable type.

"The difference between the two is similar to the wall clock and the watch. Individuals buy portable typewriters whereas offices buy office typewriters," Dukle says.

When asked why the portable typewriter has out-lived its desk-bound cousin, Dukle explained that "The quantities of portable typewriters are higher as individual buyers are buying them. Because of that, the volumes are still justifiable."

Despite the fact that the factory stopped producing typewriters in 2009 (it now makes refrigerators instead) very few newspapers wrote about the historic event at the time.

A flood of typewriter obituaries

It was only in April this year, when it was reported that the company's stock had dwindled to less than 500 pieces, that the world sat up and paid attention. Bloggers in particular.

"Back then, no-one seemed to care. Now, it's suddenly become a frenzy -- a big awakening of interest," says Dukle, who stopped using typewriters in the 1990s.

Part of the reason for the recent flood of typewriter obituaries was that some newspapers and websites falsely reported that Godrej was the last factory in the world to produce typewriters.

Portable typewriters are still produced for Swintec, a Canadian company, in countries like Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

"Typewriters have not died at all," Swintec's general manager of sales, Ed Michael, says. “When news on the street was that typewriters were not being made anymore I was like: 'Wait a minute! We're still making them!'”

Much of Swintec's business comes from correctional facilities and the police. They also sell to offices who need them for special forms and documents like birth certificates, death certificates and other official notifications.

While Godrej & Boyce will soon not be selling directly to clients anymore, its machines will still be available on the second-hand market. Good quality used typewriters are likely to be available many years from now because of their durability.

"Typewriters bought today can easily last another 10 years without any problems," estimates Dukle, who says that the second-hand market for typewriters in India is large.

Today, a used Godrej Prima model -- which was advertised in its day as a “super efficient, economical and durable typewriter that makes a good secretary a great one” -- is available for anywhere between Rs 300 and Rs 7,000, and replacement parts are still easy to find.

"Many parts of India still don't have regular energy supply, so typewriters are seen as reliable by many customers," he explains.

Of course, the lingering presence of typewriters in this day and age will be down to more than just necessity.

In the United States, where all but a few practical reasons for having a typewriter have disappeared, nostalgic typewriter enthusiasts are organizing 'type-ins', in which typewriter fans congregate in cafés with their machines and show them off to fellow aficionados.

For people in India, who will miss the status-symbol that was the Godrej typewriter, the company has carefully put together an archive of their machines since the 1950s, which is kept at the company headquarters at Vikhroli in Mumbai.

There, among the sepia photographs and typewritten documents, India's fate machine will find rest after having passed on the baton to the new, high-speed computers of the information age.