The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love

by Per J Andersson

  And now she was in India.

  There was something otherworldly about a woman travelling in a vehicle out in space. What could it mean? He thought of the elusive goddess Durga, usually described as a saviour figure, the mother of the world who fights the demons that threaten the divine order. Durga is mostly depicted standing on a severed buffalo’s head while carrying the sort of large weapons usually sported by male gods, or else she is portrayed riding a lion or a tiger.

  Valentina Tereshkova had escaped Earth, but had come back again. A woman from a place beyond everything. A woman riding a roaring lion, a fire-breathing rocket. A cosmonaut.

  Maybe she was the woman the astrologer had prophesied?

  He fantasized about a life spent with her. But it was hard to imagine. He pictured himself following her back in a motorcade as it drove into the sunset, then arriving, after a long journey, in her hometown in the Soviet Union. She stood beside him in a floral dress, he wore a dark Western-style suit. When he tried to envisage their surroundings, things became more diffuse, the emotions weaker, the colours paler. He had never seen a Soviet city, let alone a cosmonaut’s house. He did not know how they lived in the Soviet Union, what their food tasted like, the shapes of their cars or the height of the trees.

  He read about the poor Kazakh villagers who had gathered around her capsule upon landing. The woman in the spacesuit stood face to face with the hungry, hollow-eyed shepherds and farmers.

  ‘Wait!’ she said, and turned back to the capsule where she rooted around for some small packages, boxes of biscuits and other food left over from her trip into space.

  ‘Here, take this!’ she said, and offered what she had.

  She was later chastized by the Space Agency welcoming committee; she should not have given away her space food.

  PK imagined Valentina landing her spaceship in Athmallik and handing out the packages of dry food to the needy. The thought made him warm inside, because he knew there were good people in the world and Valentina was one of them. She did what she could to reduce human suffering.

  But the dream was fading. He knew deep down that she was not the woman from his prophecy, she was not his wishing star. Such ridiculous thoughts! He walked through the dark, deserted streets of the city in search of a cardboard box or telephone cubicle to sleep in.

  The next day he scoured the newspaper stands that lined the pavement outside the railway station. The Navratnam Times. The Times of India. The Hindustan Times. The Hindu. The Indian Express. What they had written about him?

  ‘Is that you, in the papers?’ a chai man nearby asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ he said as he paid the man thirty paisa and received a rough terracotta cup of steaming tea. The man looked up at him from where he was squatting by his dented aluminium kettle, which bubbled over a crackling fire. He was impressed.

  PK bought The Times of India and flicked through its pages.

  There they were, on page twelve. Valentina and PK, standing in the embassy. Boy from jungle meets woman from outer space, the headline read.

  His head was filled with noise. His life story, not someone else’s, right there in the paper.

  That day PK was the talk of Delhi’s bus queues and teashops. Several newspapers carried the story. People greeted him as he made his way from the station, taking his usual detour through the bumpy main street of Paharganj market. People stopped and asked if he was well as he walked past peeling façades and loosely hanging billboards and out onto the wide Panchkuian Road towards Connaught Place.

  After a summer working in Stockholm, Lotta was back in England, on the south coast, learning English. As part of her studies she had to prepare a special project, and hers was going to focus on India, obviously. She took the train up to London from Portslade-by-Sea and made her way to the Commonwealth Library. Over the course of a few weeks she worked intensely, putting together an exhibition about the tribal people of Orissa and their ceremonial murals in particular.

  As she sat looking at the pictures of Indian ikat fabrics, she thought the patterns felt familiar. Then it hit her. They looked just like some of the material used in the traditional festive clothing of Sweden. In fact, they were almost identical to the ones made in Toarp, a small community on the outskirts of Malmö. How could Indian and Swedish fabric be so similar?

  Everything happens for a reason.

  India had problems. Inflation was out of control and unemployment was on the rise. PK read in the newspapers that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had described the situation as ‘increasingly difficult to contain’. The Hindu right wing threatened to incite religious strife.

  PK, however, walked his usual route between the station where he slept and the fountain where he made his living.

  A neatly dressed man stood to the side as PK was drawing another customer.

  ‘A portrait, sir? Ten minutes, ten rupees!’ PK said without looking at him.

  ‘Not for me,’ the man answered. ‘Come, so we can talk undisturbed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Our great President, the honourable Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, wants to invite you to dinner. He also wants you to do his portrait,’ said the man, who introduced himself as the President’s secretary.

  A few days later, PK was driven to the Presidential Palace in a white Ambassador with red lights on the roof and sirens blaring.

  Originally built by the British for the last viceroy, the Presidential Palace was an imposing sandstone building that radiated power and strength.

  He was received by the Presidential Guard, which consisted of a few sturdy Sikhs in turbans. They could crush me with one hand, PK thought, as he was ushered inside. Everywhere he looked, there were gold, mirrors and chandeliers, the shine of the old Empire. PK was impressed. He’d never seen anything like it, except in pictures. It was almost unthinkable that he, of all people, should be here, in the centre of power in the middle of the nation’s capital, about to meet the President.

  He put his palms together and bowed deeply as a gesture of respect. The President sat next to a small round table on which stood a vase of flowers. PK began work immediately. The secretary glanced at his stopwatch. ‘Tell me when you are done,’ he said.

  Thirteen minutes later, PK called ‘stop’ and the secretary pressed the button. The President looked at the drawing. He sat studying it for a long time without saying anything. Then he turned to PK.

  ‘Lovely,’ he said.

  The President then started to make jokes. He had a laugh like a scooter start engine. Just like any other ordinary Indian uncle.

  As PK was leaving, he heard the President say to his secretary: ‘Don’t forget to send money to my daughter.’

  PK liked him; the President of India seemed to be a loving parent, worrying about how his children were getting on now they had left home. It made him seem more human. As he left the palace, PK was met by a wall of shouting journalists and flashing cameras. The press wanted to know what the President had said.

  ‘He said he had to send money to his daughter,’ PK replied, believing the journalists would interpret it the same way he had, that the President was a caring, likeable man.

  But the reporters did not find it nearly so charming.

  ‘He should be worrying about the country, not his family,’ one said.

  ‘India’s future is more important than his daughter,’ complained another.

  ‘You get the leaders you deserve,’ said a third.

  The next day, all the major newspapers published articles about his visit to the palace, illustrated with photos of the President, PK and his portrait. The fact that the drawing had taken only thirteen minutes to complete was a major focus of the reports, as if he had been an athlete, not an artist.

  In the spring of 1975, the police were becoming ever more aggressive in their treatment of crowds. The government was afraid that the political unrest might escalate into violence, riots and rebellion.

  PK had installed a sign at the fountain: Ten rupees, t
en minutes. The queues grew. He started to become so popular that the police saw him as a security risk. The chief of the Connaught Place station came to see him personally, declaring: ‘This cannot continue!’

  So they took him in again.

  After he was released early the next morning, he went to the art school, his stomach full and body rested, and then straight back to the fountain to take up where he had left off the night before.

  In addition to the commissioned portraits, PK hung landscapes and expressionistic oil paintings from his starvation period on display. These paintings grew in number. Every evening, between six and nine, the fountain and the sunset mirrored each other in the most beautiful spectacle PK had ever seen. The last rays of the day created rainbows out of the atomized water droplets. This was the most inspiring gallery possible for his art.

  Gradually, the police grew politer in their dealings with him. They still arrested him on occasion, mostly for show, so that people knew they were taking action. Increasingly, however, they left him in peace. The newspaper articles earned him the moniker ‘the Fountain Artist’. The teachers at the art school admired his industriousness and gave him encouragement. Students who had not previously noticed him wanted to be friends. Within the space of a few weeks he had gone from a nobody, to a celebrity. Everybody loves success.

  After the meetings with the cosmonaut and the President, he began appearing in the media on a weekly basis it seemed, as he was interviewed for television, radio and magazines. He became the subject of conversation from the country’s slums to the parties of the elite, and the queues around his easel grew ever longer. His reputation spread, reaching the centre of power, and two MPs, who had seen his picture in the paper, invited him to the Constitution Club of India on South Avenue, close to the Prime Minister’s residence.

  That was where they were sitting and talking when Parmeshwar Narayan Haksar happened to see him.

  Haksar was Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary. The government was in trouble and Haksar knew they needed good publicity. PK could be just the right person, went his thinking. He came from the very bottom of society, but he also personified the drive that Haksar thought many privileged Indians lacked. PK was a victim of society’s evils, everything that Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party wanted to change about India. The untouchables represented a large potential voter base, a fifth of the country’s population. If Indira Gandhi could win their support, she would be able to implement the drastic measures she was hoping for and still win the next election.

  PK quickly realized that Haksar was an important person whom Indira trusted. He was her media adviser, personal think-tank and political strategist all in one, and a persistent advocate of more socialist government policies. He belonged to the inner circle of radical Brahmins from Kashmir. Some political commentators claimed that Haksar was behind the government’s nationalization of the banks and the excommunication of certain emblems of capitalism such as Coca-Cola.

  Haksar introduced himself and asked: ‘Would you agree to do a portrait of the Prime Minister?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ PK replied, jumping up from his chair.

  ‘Where can I reach you? Phone number?’

  ‘Sir, I have no phone.’

  ‘Address then?’

  ‘I sleep one night at the railway station, the next at the police station, sir.’

  ‘Shhh!’ Haksar whispered. He leaned closer. ‘I’ll arrange somewhere for you to stay.’

  Indira Gandhi was an impressive woman. Motherly and authoritative, and yet jolly at the same time. She made jokes about the recent news and the objects that decorated the Prime Minister’s residence. PK did not fully understand them, but her entourage laughed and PK decided it was better to laugh along too.

  He had imagined she would be tall, that he would have to crane his neck to speak to her. But she was barely five feet seven, around the same height as him, but with a fine womanly figure and beautiful eyes. Just like a movie star.

  Indira asked PK politely where he came from and about his future plans.

  His voice trembled as he answered.

  ‘Orissa, I come from Orissa, but now I go to art college here in Delhi,’ he said, trying to sound dignified.

  ‘I see,’ Indira said, somewhat distracted. She paused and looked at the flowers in the pots by the window.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, turning to the man standing by the door. ‘You must remember to water the plants. Don’t forget to water the plants.’

  She then sank back into her ruminations.

  Indira and PK looked through his portfolio of oil paintings, charcoal drawings and pencil sketches. The Prime Minister had attended Tagore’s art school in Shantiniketan, this much PK knew, so she had a genuine appreciation of art. She flipped through his work, registering a partial interest with a few nods and ah-has.

  ‘This one is nice,’ she said, holding up a drawing, ‘but the others… Hmm, well, you will have to practise more. That’s the only way to get better.’

  She praised him nevertheless and said she earnestly hoped that he would become famous. ‘You deserve it.’

  They then went into another room to eat lunch, served by uniformed waiters. They sat at the table, Indira Gandhi, the world famous Prime Minister, and PK, the homeless jungle boy. But Indira did not know that PK slept in the railway station; Haksar had not told her.

  If only Ma could see me now.

  He glanced at Indira as they ate. She peeled her own cooked potatoes. Strange. Couldn’t the servants do that for her?

  After this first meeting with Indira Gandhi, PK went straight to Orissa Bhavan. He was going to meet a friend from school who was working as a cook in the clubhouse. PK was looking forward to being given another meal, but was greeted by a crowd of strangers as soon as he stepped through the door. People looked at him differently now, he could sense it. They were curious, expectant. What was he going to say? Now they assumed it would be interesting.

  ‘I’ve prepared a special meal for you, PK,’ his friend said and bowed deeply as if he was talking to a state official.

  ‘Who are they?’ PK asked and pointed at a group of men nearby.

  ‘Journalists,’ his friend replied and smiled. ‘They want to know what she said.’

  A journalist from The Navbharat Times approached and asked for an interview. PK responded willingly to his questions. He liked the attention, and the fact that they were asking him, of all people, about the Prime Minister. It made him feel important. But the journalists also seemed to want to make the meeting more remarkable than it really was. In reality, it had been nothing more than a conversation about art with an influential woman. Not just any woman, to be sure. But it was not that amazing, was it?

  He had been nervous and unsure of himself during that first meeting with Indira Gandhi. Indians worshipped the Prime Minister as if she was a goddess and he had not known how to behave.

  But there were to be more meetings with Indira. Three in all. And it was all down to Haksar. The second time they met, his fear eased and she seemed like a genuinely good person. He did not need to be afraid of her.

  On the third occasion, he allowed himself to be photographed in the gardens of her residence together with the Prime Minister and a group of untouchables from Orissa. Indira’s photographer took the pictures and they appeared on the front pages of several newspapers the next day. She stood in the middle in her lion-yellow sari, her undulating hair shimmering from a distinguished light grey to black, while the untouchables squatted in the grass, as if they were her disciples.

  After all these meetings, rumour spread back home in Orissa that the Prime Minister, the ‘Mother of the Country’ as she was known, had adopted PK. He was no longer the son of Kalabati, the tribal woman who had been dead and buried for several years. He was born of Indira Gandhi now, even though he was not in need of a new mother. Perhaps in these troubled times, Indira Gandhi’s government needed him more.

  Lotta was not the type to obsess over setba
cks. They were nothing more than passing rain clouds that she let float by as she went in search of sunshine. What was important was the here and now. There was real misery in the world to be sure, but still, it was best not to over-identify with the darker aspects of life. Many people got stuck reliving their past again and again, as if only comfortable when in pain.

  She started practising yoga, and in it found a philosophy perfectly suited to her personality. The movements and breathing techniques were grounded in an idea she had already embraced: it takes guts to change yourself, but you cannot be a slave to your mind forever.

  Everyone wants to find happiness, but it is difficult to live by such principles. We need reminding of them every day, so as not to stagnate, she told herself.

  But how was it possible to be happy in the knowledge of the way people treated each other and the horrible injustice of the world? Yes, it was important to be politically engaged, and yet she could not bring herself to be so. There are many different and equally valid opinions. No ideology should claim to be absolutist. She belonged to no religion, wore no badge to declare her political allegiance. She could no more call herself Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, than conservative, liberal or socialist.

  Take a little bit from all of it.

  Despite her Christian upbringing and a natural affinity for yoga and the Eastern philosophies, Lotta was critical of organized religion. She was a humanist. That was enough. Everyone had within them the same energy, regardless of ancestry or skin colour. It was simply impossible to be racist, thought Lotta.