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Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre: Tukaram in Berlin

Updated on: 06 November,2016 09:03 AM IST  | 
Sumedha Raikar Mhatre |

A diary written in the early 1920s by a Marathi youth tells us why three British subjects from India banked on a war-torn Germany as their gateway for growth

Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre: Tukaram in Berlin

Tukaram Chaudhari with his wife and six children seen at the Taj Mahal, Agra, during a family holiday in 1954
Tukaram Chaudhari with his wife and six children seen at the Taj Mahal, Agra, during a family holiday in 1954


A group of twenty-somethings gather at a hotel around 8.30 pm. With either coffee or wine in hand, they raise a toast and start their weekly task — scheduled English conversation on an array of everyday realities. Discussions range from adulterated butter, colour-coded ration food coupons, low-cost papermaking techniques and brown coal stock to room heaters and the rising value of the Pound. After devoting a good two hours to the spoken English agenda, the assembly alters into an uncompelled social do, an unendorsed bureau for the spouse hunter too.


Tukaram Chaudhari seen in a 1924 picture with his German hosts in Berlin
Tukaram Chaudhari seen in a 1924 picture with his German hosts in Berlin


The English Conversation Club, where a lot happened over beer and cigarettes, is not a setting of a Third World country aspiring for education and incentives brought by the rising American dollar. But, the tableau characterises the post-World War I Germany where the youth — worried about the devalued Mark — took to English language skills as a means to find a better life in England and America. Students’ groups, clubs and trade unions of the 1920s’ Germany form the core of a recently published Marathi memoir titled German Rahiwas written by Tukaram Ganu Chaudhari — a first-generation learner from a poor farmer family — who landed in Berlin (with two similarly industrious friends) in 1922 for a self-initiated exploration of Germany’s paper making, dyeing and textile industries. The handwritten diary jottings of his three-year stint in diverse locales of Germany and adjoining Bohemia were restored by his children (now scattered in India and the US) in the form of a hard-bound 350-page narrative. The diary was part of the family heirloom; retrieved after painstaking decoding of the scribble, particularly the German usages. It brings alive a yesteryear Germany where women had to sell their tresses to feed families; the paucity of cotton compelled people to try out paper clothing; and a lifesaving of sixty thousand Marks would not buy a loaf of bread.

Skating in Berlin
Skating in Berlin

Published by the reputable Lokvangmay Griha and edited by Jnanpith award-winning writer Dr Bhalchandra Nemade, German Rahiwas captures the hope of empowerment nurtured by three British subjects from India who choose a war-torn and politically-defeated Germany as their gateway for growth. It is an amazing recount of three eventful years in which a 22-year-old Indian youth, hailing from downtown Bhalod (a part of the Khandesh region in Maharashtra), equipped with rudimentary German, creates his own apprentice opportunities in mills, factories, power looms and design schools; volunteers to learn not just textile design, but also human resource management; and embraces a foreign people whose meat-eating, smoking, drinking and partying habits stand diametrically opposite the social customs he was brought up on.

The handwritten diary jottings of Tukaram Ganu Chaudhari’s three-year stint have now been restored by his children, Saroj Warke and Vijay Chaudhari, in the form of a hard-bound 350-page narrative, edited by Jnanpith award-winning writer Dr Bhalchandra Nemade. Pic/Sameer MarkandeThe handwritten diary jottings of Tukaram Ganu Chaudhari’s three-year stint have now been restored by his children, Saroj Warke and Vijay Chaudhari, in the form of a hard-bound 350-page narrative, edited by Jnanpith award-winning writer Dr Bhalchandra Nemade. Pic/Sameer Markande

The diary rests on an Indian’s unimaginable readiness to accept the unfamiliar and the unusual. Despite hailing from a sheltered Hindu (Leva Patils who speak the Ahirani-Marathi mix), overtly religious background (bound by the philosophy of the Mahanubhav Panth; married at an early age of 17), he acclimatises himself to the German social mores in a jiffy. He is proud of his Hindu upbringing and his vegetarianism; he insists on the Hindu rites of cremation when he loses one of his colleagues, but he doesn’t moralise over his lifestyle choices. Taking all the firsts of his life in his stride — first cruise travel (14 days), first snowfall, first ball event in close physical proximity with women, first beefsteak, first chocolate, first woollen underwear, first overcoat, first dinner with a fork and a knife — Tukaram absorbs each experience with grace.

“Though hailing from a village where women couldn’t even write their names, he bears no prejudice towards the independent educated single women he meets in Germany. He had no bitterness for girls who smoke or those involved in courtships before marriage,” admires Dr Nemade, adding that German Rahiwas is about unconditional love connecting dissimilar people. “Tukaram Chaudhari wasn’t going to be able to return their favors in any material way ever in life and yet four German women assumed godparent-like roles during his illness and penury; one young girl fell in love with him and was ready to immigrate to India. This is what you call labha vin priti, love without expectation,” observes Dr Nemade.

German Rahiwas is about a struggling Indian student’s inborn ingenuity to traipse over every impediment and turn it into a building block. Apart from the multiple stints in the factories at Cottbus, Spremberg, Altenburg, Chemnitz and Reichenberg, Chaudhari learns in unlikely scenarios too. With an aim of developing a good base of textile industry contacts, he enrolls as a member of the Staats Bibliothek in Berlin by paying a deposit of 3,000 Marks. He tries to understand the social etiquette that binds student groups, particularly the Textilia Club in Raichenbach. He is amused by their pride in violent sword fights. He is curious about the sports and games — brain teasers played by the German youth (Gezelshafts). He is alert to the social realities, especially the lack of caste hierarchy, which according to him makes Germany livable in not-so-charitable times. In an attempt to appreciate the German psyche and get close to some families, Chaudhari indulges in theatre, movies and music concerts. He admits that his long-term investment in people was way beyond his budget.

Tukaram Chaudhari’s wanderlust is the highlight of German Rahiwas. His cultural excursions coincide with his tense, edgiest moments; but his you-live-only-once-determination never stops him from touching the farthest corners. At a time when seasickness grips most passengers on the 14-day cruise to Berlin, he has the drive to take sightseeing stops at Suez Canal, Port Said, Marseilles and Paris. His wide-eyed inspection of the Red Sea (to see if it is red in colour) is one of the funniest episodes. On his return journey, physical fatigue and homesickness don’t hinder his exploration of Brussels, London, Gibraltar, Pompeii and finally Colombo, from where he takes a train to Madras and then to Bombay, so as to reach his village Bhalod (near Jalgaon). The sheer kilometre coverage is zapping; some of it has the trappings of leisure travel; but it is life learning to the core.

Chaudhari died at the ripe age of 85. His German stint did not give him an instant job after coming back, but it became the backbone of what he accomplished thereafter. He had successful tenures in several mills — Raymonds, Victoria Mills (Mumbai), Sarabhai Group Mills (Ahmedabad), Empress Mills (Nagpur), New Victoria Mills (Kanpur); he was specially called upon by the government to revive a sick mill in Amalner. From what his children recall now, almost a century after the diary was written, that his German stay was his source of strength. His son Vijay Chaudhari (79) says, “our father was never keen on the publication of the diary for a wider audience, but for him, and for us too, it was a symbol of what can happen when you are hell bent on learning.”

Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text. You can reach her at sumedha.raikar@gmail.com

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