A Life Less Extraordinary is a memoir of politician, actor and social activist Lav Bhargava.
The self-reflective journey of his life is most interesting but even more thrilling is the story of where Bhargava comes from.
The saga of Bhargava does not begin in 1952, the year he was born along with a twin brother on October 20, in Lucknow but goes back to the time when Munshi Nawal Kishore realised the power of knowledge, and decided to share reading and writing with society in the second half of the 19th century.
Kishore’s contribution to the literary renaissance of the sub-continent is precious to the vernacular literati as well as he published volumes of Urdu, Persian and Arab scholars.
Born in 1836, Kishore is Bhargava’s great-great-grandfather who kept the love for reading and writing alive. His contribution to disseminating knowledge had strengthened the freedom movement against the British.
Bhargava describes his present home as a jewel nestled in Hazratganj, the heart of Lucknow’s bustling downtown. The estate was bought by Kishore from the British in 1868.
It is here that the historic Nawal Kishore Press (NKP) was established. The printing and publishing house of the NKP was the biggest in Asia and the second largest in the world after the Alpine Press in Paris.
This was the headquarters of the Avadh Akhbar, the famous Urdu newspaper that had Maulana Azad as a special correspondent, and writers Munshi Premchand, Pandit Roop Narain Pandey, and Dulare Lal Bhargava had served as editors. The NKP also published Madhuri, the monthly literary magazine.
Pandit Ratan Nath Dhar Sarshar had serialised his Urdu novel in the Avadh Akhbar when he was its editor. Abdul Halim Sharar’s Guzishta Lucknow was also printed by NKP.
Due to the overbooked capacity of the press, NKP was unable to print legendary Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib’s Deewan-e-Ghalib.
However Ghalib had maintained a warm, though distant, relationship with Kishore throughout the years and his description of the persona of the prince of print remains a favourite legend. Ghalib had eulogised that Kishore was endowed with the grace of Venus and the character of Jupiter…
khalik ne unko zohra ki soorat aur mushtari ki seerat ata ki hai
Kishore had become aware of the potential of print early in life. His life is an example of entrepreneurial zeal and ambition.
At the age of 22 years, he commercialised the art of learning by making the printed word available at affordable prices. Kishore had revolutionised the intellectual life of the times by producing scholarly and popular books on religion, medicine, history, and literature, identifying the contributions of individual scholars, literati and translators.
The time’s most sensational event in the world of printing and publishing was NKP’s decision to publish a moderately priced version of the Quran at the price of one rupee and a half, bringing the holy book within reach of ordinary people.
The finely printed lithographed Holy Quran for the common man was published with pride by Kishore, a Hindu Kashmiri Pandit.
Kishore had made available different religious texts to people of various faiths in Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian.
Decades ago novelist and the late filmmaker Kwaja Ahmad Abbas had referred to him as a Hindu Maulvi and a Muslim Pandit when such talk was taken as a compliment.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Swaraj Is My Birthright …was first published by NKP in Avadh Akhbar.
Kishore’s work is the most significant development of the 19th century but its importance is often glossed over. The output of books printed in Hindi and Urdu is phenomenal during this period when the NKP had dominated the north Indian printing scene for decades.
This is the family in which Bhargava was born.
He writes that parallel to the residential estate, the printing press had stood proudly, its rhythmic hum filling the air with the symphony of creation.
During his formative years, it was here that he had embarked on an unconventional apprenticeship delving into the art and intricate mechanics of the press.
At the heart of it all had loomed the magnificent Diana, a German marvel of automation that never failed to command attention. The Diana was the invention of Johannes Gutenberg credited with developing movable type, which had revolutionized printing and knowledge dissemination in the 15th century.
Bhargava was put under the charge of foreman Tandon who wore a perpetual coat of grime and nauseating traces of printing ink. Under his watchful eye, Bhargava was granted access to a realm where sheets of blank paper had metamorphosed into printed magic.
As his fingers tangoed along the mechanical wonders, the young Bhargava recalled marveling at the ingenuity behind each movement. The Diana possessed a particular enchantment, a hidden power that allowed it to halt its rhythmic sway at the slightest touch. Bhargava admits to being captivated by this stunning automation, a marvel of human innovation.
The other two were Selecta and Mercedes, also automatic machines, the only ones left when Bhargava had interned.
Others were antiquated handfed machines from the time of Kishore.
However Bhargava’s internship remained just that, brief as he went on to concentrate on alternative careers in film acting and politics.
Today only echoes fill the inside of the halls of the legendary printing press that had once hummed with a vibrant rhythmic sound, making Bhargava confront the undeniable truth that none in his generation of a complex web of family members has displayed any burning fervour or a meticulous plan for the resuscitation of the iconic printing press.
Bhargava’s story is full of wistful descriptions of Lucknow as it once was much closer to earth than it is today.
Those were the days when the surahi, the clay water jug, and ghada, the clay water pot full of cool water and tea had quenched the thirst. The elixir was sipped from a kulhad, the handless clay pottery cup.
In his zamindari village of Salembad around 50 kilometres from Lucknow he had resided in a mud hut called the kothar. While early winters were bearable, the summer months demanded the punkha fans. The punkha was a cloth fan made by attaching heavy fabric to a six foot long wooden frame or bar and suspended horizontally from the ceiling. The fans were operated manually by local villagers dressed in white muslin saafa or Nehru topi on their heads.
The scorching summer months in Lucknow were spent in the luxury of desert coolers clothed in khas ki tatti grass sheets that were soaked in water to cool the rooms.
At night the family had slept under mosquito nets with table fans on either end of the bed. …an experience most romantic and mysterious to lie beneath the starry night sky counting and recounting the stars endlessly, tracking constellations with an index finger.
Those were the days, of hours of tafree or loitering, and gup marna or indulging in inane conversations, both apt examples of misspent youth, and the decadent Lucknawi culture.
A Life Less Extraordinary: My Journey through Politics, Passion, and Purpose by Lav Bhargava, published by Hay House 2025.