Gole Bazaar 1960s - Printers

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There was only one Printing Press in Gole Bazaar in the 1960s and my friend N used to crack that it looked very like that of John Gutenberg (AD 1400 vintage). It was in a line parallel to the High Street. And I guess it used to print wedding cards and Railway Brochures.

There was another in Chota Tengra within the precincts of the Chaitanyashram run by its Swamijees.

Printing and Religion always had a symbiotic existence. The biggest thing Gutenberg did soon after inventing his Printing Press, the Mother of all Presses till HP took over, was to print cheap and easy-to-read read Bibles. Prior to that, I guess, all the available Bibles were handcrafted, elaborately calligraphed, and highly decorated prize possessions. Printing on an industrial scale effectively democratized Religion.

My Father graduated from the prestigious Christian College at Madras in the 1930s. There was this lovely Studio Photo of him with a Parchment Degree Certificate (unlike the imitation thing that IIT KGP fobbed off on me), gown and hood, and looking furiously celebratory. And, to go with the Degree, his College gave him a wonderfully printed and bound gilt-edged Holy Bible with which I used to play. Its papers were thin but glossy and RKN would have loved it...maybe he too got one.

I too got one along with my Degree Certificate from my AU at Vizagh. But by then there must have been a funds crunch and an explosion of Degrees and my copy of the Pocket Bible didn't last long. But I also got a free Pocket English Gita printed at the Advaitashrama at Mayawati, Almora, founded by the Western disciples of Swami Vivekananda in 1899:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Ashrama

That was the first Gita I read. A lovely Gita in Telugu script, printed by the Ramakrishna Mutt at Mylapore, Madras, gifted to me by my mom, is still with me well-flipped yet in good condition. There is a sprawling RK Mission in Hyderabad too at Indira Park. It has a very good Bookshop which I visit often to buy copies of another fabulously printed Collection of Vedic Hymns in Telugu script with meanings. I buy, off and on, several copies of it because whoever visits me (of my senile age) picks up a copy and filches it. The book itself costs me only Rs 35 (highly subsidized) but I get it rexine-bound gorgeously and the visitors love the binding more than the text {;-}. I myself use my original paperback. There is a lesson there...paperbacks are good for reading and rereading while rexine-bounds are good for display and preservation...binding spoils the fun of reading.

My treasure-trove (as Supratim puts it) of Ishani-set of 4 booklets of gul tales is almost depleted. So, I got 5 xeroxed and rexine-bound sets meant for Ishani when she grows up enough to show off.

Coming back to the Chaitanyashram Press, I recall going there along with my friend N to get my wedding cards printed. The Press was manned by a taciturn and gloomy technician. I think the whole job of setting manually each and every letter on their lead heads, arranging them in a frame, taking the proofs and correcting them, inking the drum and feeding papers one by one and cleaning blotches of KGP sweat, and facing irate customers who make corrections after the proofs and refuse to pay for them...the whole routine must be vexatious enough to make even a Sadhu revolt.

The only fun we had at that encounter was with the newly joined Clerk who was supposed to do the billing and maintaining the Cash Register. After we paid cash and asked for a Receipt, he wrote it up in his Bill Book with his ball pen on a top page with a carbon paper inserted beneath it. And when he tore it off, it was great fun to watch his face...the Carbon Copy turned out to be as blank as the Answer Script of my son's mid-term math paper in his first semester (as he says). And the Clerk was turning it over and over till my friend pointed out that the Original on which he wrote had an extra copy on its reverse...as a mirror image. The whole thing was mystifying to him till my friend showed him that he inserted the carbon paper the wrong way round.

And he was a sight to watch...it was as if Watson finally understood that the gleaming Hound of the Baskervilles was only an enhanced version using the science of luminescence:

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Ghost-BlackDog.jpg/300px-Ghost-BlackDog.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hound_of_the_Baskervilles&h=234&w=300&sz=4&tbnid=vxhwbKfWp7_OHM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=115&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhound%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bbaskervilles%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=hound+of+the+baskervilles&docid=jA0oYWgGynIHGM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uBzFTpLhHoLxrQeu6YThCw&ved=0CEEQ9QEwAg&dur=31

Well, our IIT too had its own captive Printing Press in the backyard of the Old Building. I suppose it was used to print our Annual Reports and the Scientific Journals brought out by some Departments...I recall the AgE had her own monthly Journal. But as time progressed, it was found that getting things printed by Ashrams turned out to be cheaper and better for the IIT and so our Press went on to prove the Theory of Use and Disuse till Professor A K Gayen of the Math Department went to Cambridge where he learned the latest Printing Technology of the hoary Cambridge University Press (in which the Reprints of my PRS Papers were printed) and tried implementing it in our Press...but you know how tough that sort of a thing is....teaching new tricks...

But soon our Desktop thing appeared and my Laser Booklet published by the Nehru Museum got printed there...sort of.

Hi-tech printing never looked back and today I watched with great pleasure photos of Obama smooching Hu Jinatao on the front page of ToI...

Good News! Amitjee is blessed with his own Ishani and must be as pleased as gps...we are the same age...


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