Dr Jitendra Awhad- “Chawlit-le Tower”- Tribute to great writer “Baburao Arnalkar”

Housing Minister Dr Jitendra Awhad at his literary best, when he pays tribute to great writer of mysteries- Mr Baburao Arnalkar

Sherlock Holmes address- 221, B Baker street, London. People used to come looking for this address to meet Holmes, to see him, they used to send him a letter. Let’s inform you about your problems. This city was true. that road, that building, was all true. but Sherlock Holmes was fictional. Arthur Conan Doyle was the producer of the Character. however, the charm of their stories was so ingenuous that readers thought it was a living character;

All of that seemed true. two more characters had the same fate; that too in Mumbai. their names – Jhunjar and Dhananjay. Jhunjar lived in a slum on Marine Drive in Mumbai, along with his wife Vijaya and servant Netaji; so Dhananjaya’s house was in Gavdevi. that is, in the days before independence, many young children used to walk around at night with their novels in the field to find the houses of Jhunjar or Dhananjaya. why at night, usually at the same time, jhunjar, dhananjaya used to go on his campaigns, so. the police caught these young men who were roaming around in such a timely manner. take out the book and send them home. in the names of dhananjaya, jhunjar, readers also sent letters to the author of the novels. the author’s name was Chandrakant Sakharam Chavan. but no one knows them by this name. he is known as baburao arnalkar.

He was originally from Arnala, so Arnalkar. by the way, it is true with Mumbaikars. He was only ten months old when his aunt brought him to Mumbai. the purpose behind this is that the boy will be a little happier in Mumbai than in the poverty in his parents’ house in Arnala. This aunt used to live in Manaji Raju-ji’s one-storey chawl in old Chikhalwadi near Grant Road Station. It was there that Baburao’s childhood was gone. during world war I in 1916, there was a major stampede in Mumbai due to the fear of a German bombing. At that time, they had to go back to Arnala; but after passing the third, he was brought back to Mumbai. He was taken at Aryan High School here. This Chawl, this school taught Baburao a lot. He edited the school’s manuscript magazine while in the fourth grade in this school.

It was here that he was interested in listening to the speeches of the leaders. I don’t know much; but Baburao listened to those speeches. he had heard Mahatma Gandhi’s first speech in the courtyard of Shantaram’s Chawl in Mugabhata. Later, in 1938, Baburao was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for provocative writings in the freedom movement, when he was jailed in Visapur jail,  Mahatma Gandhi and Pt. Nehru’s was there. As a child, he also met Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. There was a labour leader named Sahasrabuddhe. He is Baburao’s uncle’s friend. Baburao often accompanied him to Ambedkar’s house in the bit chawl of Parel.

There was chat, Baburao used to watch Babasaheb. sometimes Ramai used to send him to the shop to bring tea and sugar. Baburao was given such a rich childhood in this chawl. Baburao helped his family from doing hamali to working for the British, against whom he protested. He later took up a job as a manager in a glasses shop.

Later, in 1941, he started his own glasses business in Girgaum. His first mystery novel was born in the same shop. The year was February 1942. The name of the novel – The window queen. He had read Edgar Wallace’s novel ‘Three Just Men’ in Visapur jail. He introduced them to the mystery. He came here to work. The novel made readers mad and a literary Garuda named Baburao Arnalkar was born in Garuda. How many mystery novels must Baburao have written ? As many as 1,480 . This is the world record. the Guinness book took note of it; but our literary world also ignored it by waking up to Marathi Pride.

However, in the ‘underworld’ in the minds of the fans, now Baburao Arnalkar’s Jhunjar, Black mountain, Dhananjaya, bowler, Archer, Fu Manchu had created an Empire of Heroes . who will do that? who was not in these rasikas? there were veterans like Acharya Atre, Lata Mangeshkar, Balgandharva. and the common Rasik, he was dumb. it is said that Baburao, in the glasses shop where he used to sit and write novels, sometimes there was so much of crowd of fans to see him that it became difficult for Baburao to enter the shop. at such times, the police had to be called. this was Baburao’s popularity. The popularity gained only on the strength of the pen, preserving its sanctity. the emperor of “Mystery Writing’s” bid farewell to the world on July 5, 1996, at the age of 90. ‎