View source for Phalke is a changed man when he returns home to Baroda.

Phalke is a changed man when he returns home to Baroda.
The family welcomes the prodigal back with love.

After hearing his story, they arrange his marriage to the daughter of Shankar Vasudev Karandikar.
Phalke used to know his son during his theatre days.

So Phalke marries Saraswati.
She is 13, he is 32.
But the face of his first wife haunts him.


POONA & TRAVELING FOR THE ASI

In Poona, Phalke’s job requires him to travel across the country, leaving his young wife behind.

His job is to make sketches of excavated sites, drawings that will later help him to design the sets for his films.

For him, it is still a state of recourse.
He still has not been able to reconcile the memories of his first wife Kamala, with the reality of his second wife, Saraswati.

But in Prof. Bhandarkar he sees a father figure, and they spend hours in conversation.

They discuss Lord Curzon and his new policies.

During a trip to Karla caves, Phalke again meets Raja Ravi Verma, who has set up a printing press in Lonavala.

On Prof. Bhandarkar’s advice and inspired by the Swadeshi movement, Phalke also decides to set up a printing press at Lonavala, to make reproductions of Raja Ravi Verma paintings.

Malavali was the ideal place to set up a press for Raja Ravi Verma.
This was when people were leaving Bombay and running for shelter from the [[plague]].

Phalke and his wife set up their [[small printing press at Karla caves]], engraving the visionary images of Ravi Verma on the stones, from where they multiply on calendars and become household gods.


Friday, June 28, 1907

That day, Raja Ravi Verma dies.

Dada’s father also dies the same day.


Bhalchandra is born.

A full moon shines in the sky.
Phalke walks around with his infant in his arms, under the incandescent light, helped by Chance, a lady called Nanny with a child in her arms.


A second son, Mahadev, is born to Phalke.

Seth Purushottamdas Mavji comes to Lonavala to ask Phalke to open the Laxmi Printing Press at Dadar, Bombay.

He offers Phalke a trip to Germany for training in advanced printing technology.


Phalke returns to India and starts [[Swarnmala]], a Marathi monthly printed in the 3-color process of Gutenberg.

1910

The unrelenting round-the-clock work that Phalke puts in over the 3-color processes of the Swarnmala monthly without caring about food and sleep affects his system and his eyesight.

Differences with Seth Purushottamdas grow day by day and also take their toll on his health.
Their relationship becomes bitter over the running of the press.
In order to find a new profession for himself, Phalke wanders around Bombay.
As the conflict between Seth Purushottamdas and Phalke grows, he decides to leave Laxmi Printing Press.
‘His association with Laxmi Art Printing Press came to an end.

‘The hard, round-the-clock work he had put in over the 3-color process, the Suvarnamala monthly, and so on, without caring for proper food or sleep, seriously affected his system and his eyesight.

‘We had come to stay at Ismail Building, at Chowpatty, and two of our children were still very small.
We were in great difficulties.

‘Medical treatments, and even fasts and rituals on my part, were of no avail in curing his eyesight.

All his friends, like the erstwhile mayor, Nagindas Master, and a few Gujarati businessmen try to persuade him to start a new printing press, naming it Saraswati Printing Press.
But Phalke is reluctant to compete with his own earlier creation.

The Phalkes shift to Ismail building at Chowpatty with their two children.

Phalke’s eyesight is deteriorating fast.  He is almost blind.
All kinds of medical treatment and ritual offerings fail to effect a cure.

During his blindness, his brother-in-law, Anandrao Karandikar, and a playwright, Vitthalrao Shanthalkar, visit him and organize kathas and kirtans.

[[1912 - ‘RAJA HARISCHANDRA’, THE PLAY]]