Chapter 10: The Seed of Language
It was a cool winter evening in Lucknow, early 1979. The old pedestal fan hummed in the corner of the room, rustling papers stacked beside an aging terminal glowing softly in green. A pile of handwritten notes, punch cards, and logic flowcharts sat beside Ajay Singh as he typed lines of assembly code into the computer.
Little Bharat, now four years old, tiptoed into the study, his eyes scanning the maze of wires, the whirring of a floppy drive, and the cryptic symbols dancing on the screen. He watched silently for a minute, then climbed into his father's lap.
"Pitaji," he said, tapping one key gently, "sari language computer ki English mein kyon hoti hai?"
Ajay looked down, surprised. "Kya bola, beta?"
Bharat asked again, but this time more deliberately, his voice calm and innocent:
"Computer sab kuch English mein hi kyun bolta hai? Hindi mein kyun nahi?"
Ajay chuckled softly, brushing a hand through his son's hair. "Yeh machines America mein bani thi, isliye unki bhasha bhi wahi bani."
But Bharat wasn't finished. He leaned forward, eyes fixed on the monitor.
"Par agar hamare gaon ke log, ya Dadi-Dada jaisa koi, computer seekhna chahein, to kya unhe pehle angrezi seekhni padegi?"
Ajay sat silent. The hum of the fan filled the pause.
"Main to chhota hoon, par bade hone tak sab Hindi mein bhi toh ho sakta hai na, Pitaji?"
His voice was soft, but something about it stirred Ajay's core. This wasn't just a child's question—it was a challenge wrapped in affection.
Flashback: Ajay's Dream and the Fire Within
That night, as Bharat slept peacefully with a storybook under his pillow, Ajay sat on the veranda under the moonlight, thinking back to his own youth.
He had grown up in a modest family in the old part of Lucknow, the eldest of four. His father, a high school teacher of mathematics, had once taken him on a bicycle to see a mechanical calculator brought by a visiting British officer. That day, young Ajay decided he would one day build machines—not use them, build them.
At IIT Kanpur, he had stood in awe before the campus mainframe—huge, humming, foreign. He would stay back late with his professor, Dr. Joshi, one of the few Indian academics who had trained at MIT.
Ajay had struggled. The lectures were in English, the manuals denser than fog. But he persisted, burning his fingers on soldering irons, sleeping under tables, memorizing machine code by candlelight during power cuts.
He didn't just want a job. He wanted India to have its own future.
But as years passed, Ajay had become like many others—fitting into the existing system. Coding in English, automating accounting systems for government departments, and building payroll software. He had forgotten the boy who once promised his father he'd create something that spoke India's soul.
Tonight, his four-year-old son had reminded him.
The Decision: A Father Reawakened
The next morning, as Bharat played with building blocks in the drawing room, Ajay made tea and sat beside him.
"Bharat, kal raat jo tumne pucha… kya tum sach mein chahte ho ki computer Hindi mein samjhein?"
Bharat looked up and nodded, his hands still arranging bricks. "Haan Pitaji. Warna sab log piche reh jayenge. Agar sab angrezi na jaane to kya woh future mein kuchh seekh nahi sakte?"
Ajay leaned back, stunned at the clarity in his son's words. He realized—Bharat hadn't asked randomly. He had asked intentionally.
The boy was trying to push him toward something greater.
And it worked.
That evening, Ajay took out an old diary. On the yellowing first page, he wrote:
"If India must rise in the digital age, let it speak in its own voice.
Idea: Hindi Programming Interface."
Back to Campus: Rekindling the Fire
Within a week, Ajay was on a train to Kanpur again.
As the IIT campus appeared through the foggy window, memories flooded back—labs filled with chalk dust, endless cups of chai, midnight debugging with trembling hands. He walked straight to the retired faculty quarters and knocked on a familiar door.
"Joshi sir," Ajay said with folded hands.
The old professor beamed. "Aha, Singh sahab. What brings you back to the battlefield?"
Ajay poured his heart out—his son's question, the forgotten dream, the need to build something truly Indian.
Professor Joshi sipped his chai, listening with half-closed eyes. "You were always meant for something like this."
That day, the spark turned into fire.
Teamwork and the Birth of BhashaCODE
Back in Lucknow, Ajay began building a team. He called on old college friends:
Vijay Mehta, hardware integrator now working in Delhi
Meenal Deshpande, a Devanagari typographer from Pune
Farooq Khan, a linguist who had worked on Urdu keyboard layouts
Together, they built three core teams:
Syntax Translators – They redefined programming logic into Hindi:
IF → YADI
THEN → TAB
PRINT → CHHAPNA
INPUT → PRAVESH
Display Team – Designed bitmap Devanagari fonts that could be displayed on CRT monitors.
Operating System Team – Developed a simple interface based OS called Nayan ("vision"), tailored to Hindi commands.
Ajay's old office transformed. Whiteboards filled with flowcharts in Devanagari. Terminals flashed strange but beautiful combinations of logic and script.
The First Line of Hindi Code
In the spring of 1980, they typed:
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YADI sankhya > 5
TAB chhaapna "Zyada hai"
The screen blinked. Then responded:
Zyada hai
Everyone in the room stood stunned.
They had done it. India's first Hindi programming instruction had been executed.
Bharat's Silent Witness
Bharat wasn't told much. But he observed. He watched the energy return to his father's eyes. He noticed the guests coming, the late-night talks, the diagrams on the walls.
He asked, "Kya tum ek naya computer bana rahe ho, Pitaji?"
Ajay pulled him close. "Haan, beta. Tumhare sawaal ne sab kuch badal diya."
And Bharat, not fully understanding, just smiled and said, "Toh mujhe pehla code sikhana hoga na?"
Closing Scene: The First Classroom
On a humid July morning in 1981, Ajay stood at a government school in Lucknow as twenty students, most of them first-time computer users, were seated before donated terminals.
Ajay gave the instruction. The students typed:
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CHHAPNA "Namaste Duniya"
And the machine replied:
Namaste Duniya
Cheers erupted. Teachers clapped. Reporters took notes. Ajay wiped a tear from his eye.
Somewhere in the back of the room, Bharat clapped quietly, too.
And so began the new chapter of Indian computing—spoken not in borrowed syllables, but in the voice of its own soil.