In the shadows of freedom
Published by Zubaan Publishers (January, 2013)

In the early thirties Ayi Tendulkar, A young journalist from a small town in Maharashtra,travelled to Germany to study. Within a short time ,he married Eva Schubring ,his professor's daughter. Soon after the short-lived marriage broke up, Tendulkar, by now also a well-known journalist in Berlin, met and fell in love with the filmmaker Thea von Harbou, divorced wife of Fritz Land and soon to be Tendulkar's wife.

Many years his senior,Thea became Tendulkar's support and mainstay in Germany, encouraging and supporting him in bringing other young Indian students to the country.Hitler's coming to power put an end to all that ,and on Thea von Harbou's advice ,Tendulkar returned to India, where he became involved in Gandhi's campaign of non-cooperation with the British,and where with Thea's consent he soon married Indumati Gunaji, a Gandhian activist.

Caught up in the whirlwind of Gandhi's activism ,Indumati and Tendulkar spent several years in Indian prisons ,being able to come together as a married couple only after their release-----managing thereby to comply with a condition that Gandhi had put to their marriage, that they remain apart for several years.

In this unique account ,Indumati and Tendulkar's daughter, Laxmi Tendulkar Dhaul, traces the turbulent time lives of her parents and Thea von Harbou,against the backdrop of Nazi Germany and Gandhi's India , using a wealth of documents, letters, newspaper articles and photographs to piece together the inter meshed histories of two women, the man they loved, their own growing friendship ,and two countries battling with violence and non-violence, facism and colonialism.

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