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

by Per J Andersson

  The guru was close to enlightenment. The only thing preventing Adi from being freed from the cycle of rebirth was his own arrogance and pride, his refusal to accept that he was of the same flesh and blood as all other humans on Earth, no matter what caste or social position.

  Shiva and his wife Parvati wanted to play a trick on him. They transformed into a poor, lowly couple of the untouchable Pulayar caste. Their son Nandikesan joined them, turning himself into their wretched child. They were dressed as day labourers, their clothes smeared with dirt from the fields. In addition, Shiva conjured up the smells of meat and alcohol, taboos for virtuous Brahmins. Shiva reeked as if he had been drinking all night. Just to reinforce his point, he carried a jug of palm wine under one arm and had a half coconut shell of the pungent liquor in the other.

  And so, on one of the raised paths through the paddies, Shiva, Parvati and their son encountered Adi Shankaracharya. Custom dictated that an untouchable should jump down from the embankment and into the mud when faced with a Brahmin. But Shiva and his family kept walking straight towards Adi and asked him to step aside so that they might pass.

  The arrogant Adi was enraged.

  ‘How dare a family like you, dirty, smelly, drunk, meat-eating untouchables, walk on the same path as a pure and unblemished Brahmin? You smell like you haven’t washed once in your lives. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Adi thundered, and threatened to behead them, on the grounds that this was a crime that even the gods would never forgive.

  Shiva replied: ‘I admit, I have partaken of a glass or two, and it was a while since I last bathed. But before I climb down into this muddy field, I want you to explain to me what makes you, a clean and high-caste Brahmin, different to us dirty untouchables. Let me ask you a few questions.’

  If Adi was able to answer them, Shiva promised he and his family would let him pass as propriety dictated.

  ‘My first question,’ Shiva began. ‘If we both cut our hands, is not our blood the same colour? My second question: Do we not eat rice from the same field? My third question: Do you not give bananas, grown by the untouchables, as offerings to the gods? My fourth question: Do you not adorn the gods with flowers picked by our women? My fifth question: Do we not dig the wells that provide the water you use in your temple rituals?’

  Adi could not answer Shiva’s questions, so continued:

  ‘Just because you eat on metal plates and we on banana leaves does not mean that we belong to different species. You Brahmins ride elephants and we buffaloes, but that does not make you elephants and us buffaloes.’

  Adi was not only dumbfounded by the wretched man’s words, they confused him. How could this poor, illiterate untouchable, who had hardly any schooling, come up with such sophisticated and profound philosophical questions? So Adi began to meditate right there on the path and opened his sixth sense. At once he understood: the dirty Pulayar family faded and in their place appeared the gods, Shiva, Parvati and their son Nandikesan, in all their splendour.

  Horrified by what he had done, Adi fell to his knees and recited a poem in honour of Shiva.

  Shiva forgave him.

  Adi asked him why he had turned himself into an untouchable when he appeared to him, his most devoted follower.

  ‘Yes, you are a wise man on your way to salvation and enlightenment,’ replied Shiva. ‘But you will never get there unless you understand that all people deserve respect and empathy. I took this form to teach you this. You must fight against prejudice and ignorance and help people from all castes, not just your fellow Brahmins. Only then will you achieve true enlightenment.’

  Thousands of years ago, Shiva had taught the Brahmin a lesson. And yet here was PK, all these years later, the poor untouchable still drawing comfort from Shiva’s story.

  There was hope, he realized. In Kerala, where Shiva is particularly celebrated to this day, many people saw an heir to this story in the doctrines of Karl Marx. PK understood in that moment that God was not merely a tool for oppressing the poor, but also a shield against the arrogance of the privileged, a potential catalyst to effect change in the world.

  PK went to see a psychologist, who told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to mope around at home alone in Lodi Colony, but rather he should get out and socialize.

  ‘Try to enjoy life,’ he said encouragingly.

  PK consulted a friend at school, who told him to try alcohol. It had given his friend solace after the particularly painful end to a love affair.

  ‘It helped,’ he said.

  PK had never let a drop pass his lips before, indeed the idea had never occurred to him. Alcohol was for the weak-willed. But feeling desperate, he went to one of the shops in the backstreets behind Connaught Place and bought a small bottle of Indian-made foreign liquor. He found a spot in the shade, hidden behind a load of mattresses. He poured half the bottle down his throat, hissed, coughed and spat out what remained in his mouth. Then he sat down on some steps and waited. And waited. But he felt nothing.

  After some time, his surroundings began to feel soft, like cotton wool. It was a nice feeling, as if the pain and grief of recent weeks were floating away. His friend was right: alcohol helped.

  He went to the fountain to work but could barely hold a pencil. He apologized – he was sick, he said – packed up his stuff and hobbled home. He slept the rest of the evening and through the night, only to wake up late the next morning and reach immediately for what remained of the bottle of whisky.

  He drank more and more. For the next few weeks, alcohol was the first thing he tasted in the morning and the last thing at night. It made him feel like someone, or rather something, cared for him. The hard edges of the world were wrapped in a gossamer mist. Corners became round and worries faded.

  Wobbling up Parliament Street with a sketchbook under his arm, he ran into one of the policemen he had drawn in the past. The officer could smell the booze on his breath and was blunt in his greeting: ‘Why have you started drinking?’

  PK started to tell his story. He told him all about Puni, the trip to the cinema, how he had been shaken by love, the invitation to meet her parents, all the food they had made for his visit, her father, his banishment, the humiliation and his fear that no one would ever love an untouchable like him. He stank of whisky and his monologue was loud and energetic. He had difficulty keeping his balance, swaying back and forth like a mast in the wind. Then he cried.

  The officer stood and listened patiently without interrupting him, except to ask him to repeat the parts he could not catch through PK’s mumbling and slurring.

  The further he got into the story, the better PK started to feel.

  ‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ the policeman said finally. ‘May I see your hand?’

  PK held it out. The officer studied the lines on his palm.

  ‘Look here, it will all be fine! According to these lines, you will marry suddenly and unexpectedly, and the marriage will be a wonderful and happy one.’

  ‘But,’ PK continued in his garbled speech, ‘I’m untouchable. I’ll never be able to marry a Hindu woman, at least not one who can read and write and comes from a decent family.’

  ‘Maybe she won’t be Indian,’ came the policeman’s simple reply.

  That night, as he lay in bed navigating the borderland between wakefulness and sleep, bitter memories ambushed him. He was eternally doomed and yet also fated to something better.

  She came to him in his dream, an angel in white. She had travelled across the wheatfields of the Punjab and over New Delhi’s rooftops, and landed here, in his room. They were so close now they could touch each other.

  He drank in her presence, her breath, her scent and her soft hair as it fluttered against his bare shoulders. He felt her warmth and affection and somehow knew things his conscious mind did not. She was somehow bigger than him, not physically, but spiritually.

  He awoke, but she felt more like vapour, faceless and cold. And yet, her presence lingered with him into his waking hours.
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  She returned the following night. This time she came with melodies he had never heard before. It’s beautiful over there, he thought. Just like the fortune teller said.

  It was the spring of 1975, and violent demonstrations had broken out against rising food prices and the internal bickering of Hindu nationalists. Discontent was reaching boiling point.

  Even Indira Gandhi was unhappy. She was angry with antagonistic judges, critical journalists and quarrelling opposition politicians who she believed did not have the necessary skills to take responsibility for the country. What infuriated her most, however, was that she stood accused of electoral fraud. A court ruled that she had bribed voters in the last election and, contrary to the law, spent government money on her own personal election campaign. She was stripped of her seat in Parliament and forbidden to stand again for six years.

  But Indira was not going to stand idly by and watch as her opponents moved against her. She took matters into her own hands and, on 25 June, she asked the President to issue a state of emergency, citing ‘internal disturbance’ as the justification. In this one move, she had annulled the court’s decision to limit her powers and instead grabbed hold of the reins of government herself. Early the next morning, while the first monsoon rains of the season fell across New Delhi, she gathered together her ministers to tell them what was happening, and then took to the airwaves to inform the people.

  ‘There’s no reason to panic,’ her voice sounded in millions of crackling radios as clouds clogged the sky above.

  From then on, she was the sole person in charge. Indira was India, and India was Indira, as the Congress Party spokesman told the press.

  But before her speech was broadcast to the people, politicians and government officials had already whispered the news to the sleepy chai boys on Parliament Road, to the Sikh taxi drivers parked under the trees of Patel Chowk, and to the itinerant sugar-cane vendors in Tolstoy Marg. Like fire through the forest, word engulfed the city’s colonial arcades, spread among the bus drivers who goaded their crowded vehicles along Radial Road No. 1, and to the waiters at the Indian Coffee House, who served it to their guests alongside their hot drinks. Within five minutes, everyone in the city already knew what Indira was about to say.

  In the aftermath, the press was censored, opposition politicians were imprisoned, and trade unions subjugated. Journalists and intellectuals criticized the Prime Minister. But Indira was convinced that the landless and the oppressed supported her, that PK and his brothers and sisters, India’s millions and millions of poor, stood by her side.

  It was their backing she had to win if she was to remain in power. And PK believed she would bring order to the country. Leaders who looked after the poor had justice on their side.

  Delhi was papered with Maoist-sounding slogans. As he walked his usual route to the fountain at Connaught Place, posters screamed out at him:

  COURAGE AND CLEAR VISION – YOUR NAME IS INDIRA GANDHI

  A SMALL FAMILY IS a HAPPY FAMILY

  WORK MORE, TALK LESS

  EFFICIENCY IS OUR CRY

  And the one that sounded like an advertisement for the Indian Coffee House:

  BE INDIAN, BUY INDIAN

  Otherwise, it was mostly business as usual.

  The country’s most prominent businessman, Mr JRD Tata, claimed that the strikes, boycotts and demonstrations had gone too far. The parliamentary system had not adapted to the country’s needs.

  The middle classes, shopkeepers, businessmen and government officials said they were tired of the chaos, and that they preferred the police to receive new powers that would allow them to disperse threatening crowds by force if necessary, to lock up the petty thieves and ensure that the slums that had grown up along Delhi’s avenues were demolished. In the Indian Coffee House, PK heard comments like:

  ‘Opposition politicians, intellectuals and journalists just complain about the state of emergency. But we ordinary people, we like it.’

  And:

  ‘Delhi needs a strong hand. The slums are everywhere these days.’

  Even:

  ‘Now, crime has fallen, the trains run on time, the streets are cleaned and people are sterilized so that we don’t have ten children in every slum shack. But the newspapers only complain about human rights violations and rubbish like that. Things are finally improving.’

  But Delhi’s teachers, journalists and academics were shocked and angry.

  ‘How could she? It’s her son Sanjay who’s behind it, the punk. And the President? He’s nothing but a joke, Indira’s stooge.’

  Raids took place around the capital and prominent politicians, lawyers and newspaper editors, who Indira now saw as enemies of the state, were arrested. People resigned in response. The protests began to tail off. But a minority persevered and continued to demonstrate in the streets against ‘Indira’s madness’, as their placards called it.

  Once a month, the Sikh People’s Front for Civil Rights organized protest marches on the streets of Delhi. PK heard how they roared their slogans as they passed the café. He went outside to watch. The procession of men dressed in traditional ankle-length robes and blue and orange turbans floated down the avenue towards Parliament.

  ‘Indira is mad and so is India!’ the leader chanted.

  The city was boiling over, that much was obvious, but the newspapers gave the impression that all was calm and peaceful. Not a word was printed about the protests.

  Opposition to Indira became increasingly inventive, coming up with methods to fool the censors. A post in the obituary section of The Times of India reported the anonymous contributor’s regret at the tragic death of D. E. M. O’Cracy, survived by his mourning wife, T. Ruth, his son L. I. Bertie and his daughters Faith, Hope and Justice.

  How gullible can the censors be? PK laughed to himself.

  PK liked Indira, but the state of emergency was too much, even for him. He was forced to report to Haksar that some police officers were becoming more aggressive in their methods. They chased people away from his queue, ripped up his paintings and shouted at him to leave. It was as if one half of the force did not know what the other was doing. One day he was met with friendly concern, the next with a stinging slap. Their treatment of him was inconsistent to say the least.

  Haksar listened silently and then told PK he would make some calls. He assured him that he would ensure the police left him alone.

  The next day, Delhi’s governor arrived at the fountain in his official car, his advisers and servants in tow. Police harassment would cease immediately, he reported. Henceforth, no officer of the law would be allowed to arrest him because he used a public place as his private gallery.

  A few days after the governor’s visit, men from the State Electricity Board arrived to install lighting so that he would be able to work late into the evenings. He was also assigned a personal assistant, a man who would run his errands, buy food, drinks, pens and paper, as well as pack up and lock away his paintings in a specially arranged store when he finished for the night.

  ‘Anything else I can help with, sir?’ his assistant said with a salute as he closed the store.

  Haksar explained that the area around the fountain was going to become New Delhi’s Montmartre. Just like the Place du Tertre in Paris, artists would be allowed to work freely. PK would become a tourist attraction.

  The Statesman published an article a few days before Christmas 1975 about PK and the other artists around the fountain. Your face is his fortune, it declared. Just as in Paris, portraits were the mainstay of their business, rather than the more thoroughly considered works, the newspaper noted.

  It takes ten minutes and ditto rupees to get a pencil likeness of yourself from Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia… One among the seven artists holding their exhibitions in the basement of Delhi’s Connaught Place Fountain, PK has been the most successful. He earns anything between Rs 40 and Rs 150 every evening sketching passers-by and visitors to the exhibition.

  ‘Few people want to inve
st money in a landscape or on a modern art painting, but no one minds spending just Rs 10 for a portrait of theirs – especially if it’s done in ten minutes,’ observes Jagdish Chandra Sharma, one of the other exhibiting artists.

  After an unprofitable month exhibiting paintings that never got sold, Jagdish took a leaf out of PK’s art book and started making portraits. And soon his pockets too were jingling.

  PK lay on his bed, reading about Robert Clive, a strange Englishman who after his death became known as Clive of India. PK was fascinated by the story, and recognized himself in the foreign man’s unwillingness to give in to his father’s expectations, in his yearning for adventure and even his unsuccessful suicide attempts. He could have been reading about himself.

  Robert Clive was a disappointment to his father. He was born in 1725, the most rebellious of thirteen children, hyperactive, stubborn and insubordinate. He was deemed so unruly by the age of three that he was sent away from the family estate to be taken care of by childless relatives in town. But they were unable to cope, and he was sent back to the village after a few years.

  At the age of ten, he used to climb up the clock tower in a devil mask and scare passers-by below. By his teens, he was a petty criminal. Exhausted, his father eventually found him a job – on the other side of the world. He was to work as a bookkeeper at the East India Company’s offices in Madras. The family were relieved to be rid of him. It was well known that the odds of returning from India were only about fifty-fifty: he was just as likely to die from some tropical illness as make it back to the shores of Great Britain. But the eighteen-year-old Robert Clive was happy to be finally embarking on his own adventure.

  The job in Madras turned out to be deathly boring, however, and suffering insomnia, anxiety and depression, he put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Click! He tried again. Click! Click!

  PK could not put the book down.

  Everything happened for a reason, Clive concluded. God must have had a greater plan for him.