New Delhi, April 4 -- It was sometime in 1995 when my family decided to take away my beautiful pistachio-green Hermes butter-smooth typewriter and replace it with a computer. I stared at the Pentium-something in horror. It stared back at me. Some C:> thing was blinking expectantly.

My brother gave me a whack. "Well, do something!" he said.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It was rather a long time later that I was able to show off the use of incomprehensible DOS and Lynx commands that made things happen on that gaping black screen. Back then, being tech savvy made you 'one of the boys'. Know-how came from hanging around 'tech gurus' and trying to get through Windows 3.11 for Dummies.

Today, the dynamic has completely changed. I...