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 1954A group of twentysomethings gather at a hotel around 830 pm With either coffee or wine in hand they raise a toast and start their weekly task mdash scheduled English conversation on an array of everyday realities Discussions range from adulterated butter colourcoded ration food coupons lowcost 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 tooTukaram Chaudhari seen in a 1924 picture with his German hosts in BerlinThe 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 postWorld War I Germany where the youth mdash worried about the devalued Mark mdash took to English language skills as a means to find a better life in England and America Studentsrsquo groups clubs and trade unions of the 1920srsquo Germany form the core of a recently published Marathi memoir titled German Rahiwas written by Tukaram Ganu Chaudhari mdash a firstgeneration learner from a poor farmer family mdash who landed in Berlin with two similarly industrious friends in 1922 for a selfinitiated exploration of Germanyrsquos paper making dyeing and textile industries The handwritten diary jottings of his threeyear 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 hardbound 350page 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 breadSkating in BerlinPublished by the reputable Lokvangmay Griha and edited by Jnanpith awardwinning writer Dr Bhalchandra Nemade German Rahiwas captures the hope of empowerment nurtured by three British subjects from India who choose a wartorn and politicallydefeated Germany as their gateway for growth It is an amazing recount of three eventful years in which a 22yearold 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 meateating smoking drinking and partying habits stand diametrically opposite the social customs he was brought up onThe handwritten diary jottings of Tukaram Ganu Chaudharirsquos threeyear stint have now been restored by his children Saroj Warke and Vijay Chaudhari in the form of a hardbound 350page narrative edited by Jnanpith awardwinning writer Dr Bhalchandra Nemade PicSameer MarkandeThe diary rests on an Indianrsquos unimaginable readiness to accept the unfamiliar and the unusual Despite hailing from a sheltered Hindu Leva Patils who speak the AhiraniMarathi 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 doesnrsquot moralise over his lifestyle choices Taking all the firsts of his life in his stride mdash 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 mdash Tukaram absorbs each experience with graceldquoThough hailing from a village where women couldnrsquot 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 marriagerdquo admires Dr Nemade adding that German Rahiwas is about unconditional love connecting dissimilar people ldquoTukaram Chaudhari wasnrsquot going to be able to return their favors in any material way ever in life and yet four German women assumed godparentlike 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 expectationrdquo observes Dr NemadeGerman Rahiwas is about a struggling Indian studentrsquos 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 3000 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 mdash 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 notsocharitable 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 longterm investment in people was way beyond his budgetTukaram Chaudharirsquos wanderlust is the highlight of German Rahiwas His cultural excursions coincide with his tense edgiest moments but his youliveonlyoncedetermination never stops him from touching the farthest corners At a time when seasickness grips most passengers on the 14day cruise to Berlin he has the drive to take sightseeing stops at Suez Canal Port Said Marseilles and Paris His wideeyed 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 donrsquot 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 coreChaudhari 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 mdash 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 ldquoour 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 learningrdquoSumedha RaikarMhatre is a culture columnist in search of the subtext You can reach her at sumedharaikargmailcom