Theinspiration to write a piece on the subject of paper, came to me from watching a Hindi movie called ‘Kaagaz’. The movie depicts, in a telling fashion, the role that the written word, and the paper on which it is written, play in the lives of people. Interestingly enough, the plot is woven around the travails of a person who, while very much alive and kicking, tries desperately to establish the fact that he is not, in fact, dead, as recorded in a government register! The movie was followed by a sequel, ‘ Kaagaz 2 ’, in which the importance of paper was brought out even more sharply.
The message came out, loud and clear, that the mere passing of an order, by an authority, on a piece of paper, has little value, unless it is followed by concrete, and purposeful action, to convert the intention into tangible action. My brother, a Chemical Engineer and a Paper Technologist, was closely associated with the early days of the paper industry in the country. He was a prominent figure in the paper industry and served as Secretary of the Indian Pulp and Paper Technologists Association.
In the early 1960s, I spent a couple of summer vacations with him while he was working in the National Newsprint and Paper Mills or Nepa Mills Limited, in Nepa Nagar in (the then) Madhya Pradesh state. The name Nepa, quite literally, was derived from the letters of the words newsprint and paper! It was the first paper mill in the country. A pioneering industrial unit established in 1947, it serve.
