Casa Damodar

This book tells the story of Damodar Juthalal Rajani — a boy who left a small town in Saurashtra at the age of twelve and, over the course of half a century, built one of the great Indian merchant houses of the Portuguese colonial world: Damodar Mangalji & Co.

It is drawn from family photographs, newspaper profiles published in Lisbon, Africa, Gujarat and Goa between 1915 and 1975, business correspondence, government tenders, mining deeds, and cables exchanged with brokers in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Milan, New York and Tokyo. Many of these documents speak for themselves, and where possible this book lets them: the words of Governors-General, Ministry officials, newspaper editors, family members, and Damodar himself are preserved throughout, translated from the original Portuguese and Gujarati.

What emerges is not simply a business chronicle. It is the story of an immigrant who arrived in a foreign land with nothing, who built trust one relationship at a time, who was nearly killed for what his success represented, and who by the end of his life was negotiating iron ore contracts with steelmakers in Düsseldorf, Osaka, and Manhattan.

This is his story, told, as far as possible, in the order in which he lived it.