Aarva

The Hindu ·Smart escape

This Day, That Age, and a Few Memories

Published 2026-09-05 11:46:21+05:30

How do you set up a printing press in a city where you barely speak the language?

0:00 / 5:45 · Narrator Algieba

Context

In September 1976, a massive French printing press arrived in Hyderabad, and a local university student had to be pulled in just to translate for the engineer. Published on 5 September 2026, the story of The Hindu's Hyderabad launch skips past dry corporate history to capture the physical friction of bringing new technology to a changing city. It frames a specific moment when a newspaper and a metropolis were maturing together, driven by a handful of young staff members trying to get a machine working in the rain.

Show notes

An account of the 1976 launch of a major Indian newspaper's Hyderabad edition, marking the publication's shift to four-color offset printing. Through interviews with the original staff, it details the practical hurdles of setting up the new press, from importing French machinery to overcoming local language barriers. It records the ground-level work of expanding a daily print operation.

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