Indelible imprints

A two-storied,approximately 600 sq ft room opposite Alpana Theatre in the old Laxmi Road area of the city might not grab the attention of passersby easily,but the room is steeped in history.

Incorporating the same Lithograph press with which Maulana Abul Kalam Azad printed his Urdu daily Al Hilaal,city-based Sahar Art Press has been a silent observer of the historic printing evolution

A two-storied,approximately 600 sq ft room opposite Alpana Theatre in the old Laxmi Road area of the city might not grab the attention of passersby easily,but the room is steeped in history. Every corner of Sahar Art Press,one of the oldest printing presses in the city,has witnessed the evolution that Press in India has undergone. From the oldest lithograph press on which Maulana Abul Kalam Azad used to print his newspaper Al Hilaal,to the Web Offset Machine that produces 30,000 copies of newspapers in an hour or for that matter,the Invicta Sheet Filtration Offset Machine best-suited for 2000-3000 copies,Sahar Art Press can well be termed as the bonsai of the publication industry.

I am a calligraphy artiste,also called kaatib in Urdu. Those days,in 1963,when the printing technology was not as advanced as it is now,artistes would write the matter to be published on litho stones specially imported from Bavaria. I was one of very few artistes who were specialists in writing letters in reverse. This was done to ensure that the matter written on the stone would be printed in the regular manner on the paper,after pressing, says Sahar Jalgaonwi,owner of Sahar Art Press as he points towards the oldest and historic Litho machine he would practise his art on.

The interesting story behind the Litho machine in Jalgaonwis own words is,Those days,circuses in the city would need maximum printing work for their posters. The Shelar Circus from Pune owned this machine,which they had purchased from the British Government after the latter confiscated that machine from Maulana Azad for writing against the British Raj. I jumped on it when they decided to sell the machine and paid as much as Rs 30,000 in those days to purchase it.

The machine that narrates the tale of the starting point of printing technology is a litho- stone on which calligraphy artistes would write matter to be published with a special ink. Paper would then be rolled upon it so that the matter appeared on it. I would write poetry and shayari on those stones and print it on paper. It was after starting our newspaper Kaatib in 1968 that we bought the other two machines which are used for printing newspapers even today, says Jalgaonwi.

And as his press represents the legacy of printing evolution,there’s another personal connection that of his mother,which Jalgaonwi carries forward. Reminscing how Dr Radhakrishnan felicitated him during his tenure as the President of India,Jalgaonwi adds,My mother was a colleague of President Pratibha Patil when she was a member of the Jalgaon Municipal Corporation.

With his table choc-a-bloc with mementos presented to him by K R Narayanan,Atal Bihari Vajpayee,Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh for his contribution to mushaira,the legacy of the family’s Presidential and Prime Ministerial connections.

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