Chapter 28 - Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Can the Germans print a dangerous book?

Hey folks,

This chapter is supposed to be a fun interlude among all the seriousness. I wrote this chapter before I’d done all that much research, and at that point, the book was still supposed to not take itself too seriously, and I’ve tried to preserve as much of that here. We ought not forget that the characters here are young men in their early-to-mid 20s.

All I really had to go by here were that our characters tried to get the book The Indian War Of Independence (in Marathi) published in Germany after attempts to do so in France failed. But it doesn’t go well, and they decide to translate the book into English so they have more options for publishers who wouldn’t flinch at the powers that be.

The details I put in here hark back to my own experiences traveling in my 20s, though, of course, I wasn’t publishing dangerous books that threatened an empire.

One memorable experience I’ve woven in is going with my friends to Grimaldi’s by the Brooklyn Bridge, which someone told us was the birthplace of American pizza (I’m not sure that’s true, TBH). When my friends and I got there, the line to get in went all the way around the block. We were starving and the hunger and disappointment was obvious on our faces.

And then, an elderly man at the pizzeria opposite says, “Psst, why don’t you come here instead? That used to be my pizzeria. I sold it and opened my own here. Same great pizza, no long line”.

That old man was pizza legend Patsy Grimaldi, and Juliana’s Pizza was indeed yummy.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

“Ah Berlin!” Aiyar exclaimed in as German an accent as he could muster, as he and Tatya got off the train at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It was a warm September that year, and it was almost noon, so they had taken their coats off and toted them around.

“Please do not embarrass me in front of the Berliners,” Tatya said.

“But Berlin is sensationell” Aiyar said, “Big machines, all the steel, big factories. And the printing presses! The land of Gutenberg!”

“I think you mean spannend” Tatya said.

“But that doesn’t sound as….” Aiyar gesticulated his arms, looking for the words.

“Sensationell?” Tatya smirked.

They both laughed.

The station was larger than any they had seen in England or France. Electric lights were everywhere, and the swarm of people reminded them of Bombay and Madras, though somehow everyone was so much more quiet and orderly. There was an air of cold busyness somehow, more than in London, and certainly more than in Paris. In London, it felt like normally boisterous people were containing themselves for some unwritten, invisible social laws, whereas Berlin felt more like the self-possessedness was somehow encoded in the people.

“‘Der Guru Druck-und Mediendienstleistungen, Georgenstraße 850’” Aiyar read out from the note he had in his pocket, as they walked out of the station and onto the sidewalk, “How do we get there?”

“Do we have to be all business?” Tatya said, “We just got here. Why don’t we go see Gutenberg’s press? Why don’t we find a nice restaurant and try the local cuisine? There’s the Königsberger Klopse which everyone just has to try apparently—“

“Not everyone. As a vegetarian, German cuisine seems quite like the wurst” Aiyar said.

“Is it some trait in the English-educated from Madras to rely on play of words for humour? No one else does this. Just you and Rajan.”

“Everyone else is either bad at language or bad at humour,” Aiyar said.