PK had everything he had ever dreamed of living somewhere as lavish as the bungalow at 78 South Avenue, and yet he was miserable. The reason, of course, was obvious. He lay on the bed, looking out at the garden, and thought of how they had walked in the Mughal Garden behind the Presidential Palace and remembered the moment when, among the roses, tulips and temple flowers, he had placed a ring on her finger.
Despite his relative comfort, PK began to become more politically active. He wanted to change the lives of the untouchables with his art. His paintings would force the complacent middle classes to really see and understand their suffering. Outside the Congress Party Head Office, Haksar introduced him to a tall man who shook PK’s hand so vigorously he nearly yelped.
The man shared PK’s vision, and asked if he wanted to start a magazine for ‘the oppressed’.
‘Yes,’ PK said.
‘My name is Bhim Singh. You’re the famous fountain painter?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ PK replied again, more gruffly this time. He did not enjoy being treated like a celebrity. ‘And what about you, Mr Singh?’
‘I have travelled through 120 countries by motorcycle. I have been to Europe, America and Russia and also crossed the Sahara Desert.’
‘Most impressive, Mr Singh! But why?’
‘For world peace. I’m going to write a book about my experiences.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I’m going to start a newspaper.’
Singh seemed to be a strong-willed, dedicated man not content to stay in his comfort zone. Nor was he motivated by the pursuit of wealth. PK liked him instantly, and he liked PK.
‘Would you be willing to design the newspaper’s logo?’ Bhim asked.
‘Of course.’
‘And to illustrate some articles?’
‘Gladly.’
Bhim explained that he had already come up with a name: Voice of Millions. PK was appointed deputy editor there and then, and Bhim would be editor-in-chief. The two of them made up the entire editorial staff. Bhim would write, PK would illustrate.
They were given a corner of the Congress Party’s veranda. Their office comprised a worn typewriter, a broken table and two rickety chairs.
The Voice of Millions’s two-man editorial team started work that very week. Every day, they sat on the veranda and composed articles describing the dark side of Indian society, the hunger and the oppression.
‘We are the voice of the masses,’ Bhim used to declare as fatigue set in and their pace slowed.
PK designed a logo in which the letters of Voice of Millions were filled with lots of small, emaciated faces screaming for food. The newspaper of the hungry. A cry against poverty and the caste system. But Bhim did not stop there; he was fighting for another cause as well: the independence of Kashmir. On this topic PK felt less informed, so he left that particular struggle to his friend.
Their first edition was ready. PK took a bundle and went to the streets around Connaught Place. Pride swelled his chest as he carried their newspaper, a newspaper he had helped to create.
He walked a few times around the roundabout, into the side streets, through the park and between the tables of the Indian Coffee House. He walked up to the station, into Paharganj market and then back to the roundabout.
‘Get your Voice of Millions, the newspaper of the oppressed!’ He must have cried this hundreds of times.
‘The publication that will change India!’ he began to add when no one took any notice.
After two days, he had only managed to sell a handful of copies. He dumped the rest on the pavement, saying: ‘Take a copy, it’s free! Take it! Voice of Millions!’
He returned to Bhim, who was sitting on the veranda, and handed him his resignation.
‘India isn’t ready for change,’ PK said bluntly.
Bhim was not happy with PK’s decision, but he decided to continue, at least until the day Kashmir had its freedom.
‘Good luck with Kashmir, and the eradication of hunger,’ PK said and returned to his easel by the fountain.
There, at least, people took notice and appreciated him.
When anyone Swedish came to the fountain, PK stopped what he was doing and talked to them. If he heard a Swedish voice at the Indian Coffee House, he introduced himself, offering them tea just to have an excuse to sit down and talk about Sweden. He changed his sign at the fountain. Now it said, Ten Minutes, Ten Rupees. Free for Swedes.
He wanted as much contact as possible with Lotta’s fellow countrymen. Their voices and stories reminded him of her. It was his way of keeping the memories, the feelings, alive, of refusing to let her fade away.
That was how he got to know Lars.
Lars showed PK his Swedish passport and PK drew his portrait for free. He was a journalist and, just like all the others, had travelled overland from Europe to India. He had not driven, but hitchhiked. He thought PK could do the same.
Lars unfurled a map of Asia and together they sat for hours in the café, examining it. He traced his pen along the roads, which were coloured red, and read out the names of the cities. Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mashhad, Tehran, Tabriz, Ankara, Istanbul.
‘You can make the trip in two weeks, easily. Then you only have Europe left, which you can hitchhike in a week, tops.’
Yes, perhaps I could hitchhike to Sweden, PK thought.
If Lars could, then he could. Three weeks sounded manageable. Sweden had felt like another planet, unreachable for a poor Indian like him. A plane ticket cost a fortune, and he did not dare write to Lotta to ask for money. He did not own a car. But three weeks! It had never occurred to him.
Lars, in turn, was entranced by PK’s story of the prophecy and Lotta. He wanted more.
‘That’s as much as I remember,’ said PK.
‘There must be more. Try!’ Lars said.
‘There isn’t.’
‘It’s like a fairytale,’ Lars breathed.
One day, Lars told him that a Swedish director was in town, screening a film at the local film festival.
‘He could make a movie about your story,’ Lars said. ‘Sjöman. His name is Vilgot Sjöman.’
‘And he’s famous?’
‘Yes, in Sweden. And in America.’
‘As famous as Raj Kapoor?’
‘No, more like Satyajit Ray. A serious director. No singing and dancing.’
‘What movies has he made?’
‘Movies with a political message. And naked people. It was quite controversial.’
Lars wrote down the name of the hotel where the director was staying and told PK to go and introduce himself. But PK was sceptical. Movies with naked people! If the director’s reputation was considered questionable in Sweden, imagine what Indians would think! Even kissing was considered too risqué for India. He thought mainly about his family back in Orissa. They would face the consequences if it got out that he had worked with a director who made films about naked people. No, Lars’ proposal was not in the slightest bit tempting.
Nevertheless, Lars managed to get him into the film festival, which was being held in the Congress Centre. There, in the crowded vestibule, Lars caught sight of Sjöman. He rushed forward and tapped the director on the shoulder. Then he introduced PK.
The Swede had a nice manner, PK thought. He asked PK what he thought of the state of emergency and Indira Gandhi and listened carefully to his answers. But PK did not tell him anything personal. He was adamant; no sex tape director was going to make a film about his life. He was not that liberal.
He said goodbye as politely as he could and slipped back into the crowd with a disappointed Lars in tow.
PK was convinced that Lotta would come back. They had agreed upon it. They would be reunited after six months, in August, she said. Either she would come to India, or he would go to Sweden.
He graduated from the College of Art, Delhi, in June 1976 and began to plan for Lotta’s return. She can stay with me on South Avenue, he thought. No wife could be dissatisfied with an addres
s like that. No tears would fall on his polished floor.
But he had to find work. He could not sit at the fountain and draw people for the rest of his life.
India Post was looking for illustrators and the art school helped him get an interview. They liked his samples and offered him a six-month in-house training contract in Pune, a city that described itself as cosmopolitan and ‘every career-hungry Indian’s dream’.
He had a place to live, and a steady job. Or almost. Lotta would be proud of him. India Post also had an agreement with the British Post Office, and the man who interviewed him suggested that there would be a possibility that, if he turned out to be talented and hardworking, eventually, maybe, possibly, he might have the chance to move to London. The very idea of it made him jittery. Imagine living in the colonial capital, together with Lotta!
But August came and went, and Lotta did not arrive. He had neither the time nor the money to make the trip to Europe. His savings were meagre and he was still waiting to start his training.
He waited the whole of autumn to hear from India Post, but nothing came. The disappointment was crushing. But it only made him more determined to be reunited with Lotta. Their love would have its chance to bloom in person, and not only in finely worded letters. Otherwise, he risked losing her forever.
He organized a new passport and an International Youth Hostel card. Every day, as he made his way to the fountain, he gazed up at the giant billboard for British Airways that had been set up on Connaught Place. It promised another life, on the other side of the planet.
Weeks went by and he grew increasingly unstable from the intensity of his emotions and his longing for Lotta. He found it hard to concentrate, his drawings suffered and he withdrew socially.
One day, he decided to enter one of the main Delhi travel agencies he passed regularly. The girl behind the counter did not look pleased to see him standing before her, dressed in his washed-out T-shirt and jeans. How much for a ticket to Sweden? he asked. Why did he want to know? She had already decided he would never be able to afford it.
‘Just tell me what the ticket costs!’
‘Almost forty thousand rupees. Do you have that kind of money?’
No, he did not. He had been saving all summer, and yet his bank book showed the grand total of four thousand rupees. What good would all his hard work do? It would take him years.
Perhaps the prophecy had been wrong all along.
PK knew he could either sit around sinking further into despair, or he could make a move. Flying was out of the question: he couldn’t afford it. Four wheels? He didn’t own a car. Then he remembered Bhim Singh and his journey across 120 countries by motorcycle. Two wheels and a motor? That might be the answer, but it was too expensive. There was another way, though, on two wheels, powered by grit, tenacity and… love.
The Long Journey
New Delhi – Panipat – Kurukshetra – Ludhiana – Amritsar
PK arrives in Kurukshetra in the late afternoon of the first day of his journey. He has been riding since dawn, and decides he has chewed through enough gravel for one day. He dismounts his lady’s Raleigh, bought for sixty rupees. Half the price of the men’s model. Sixty rupees was a reasonable price for someone like him, who normally struggled to pay for train tickets.
He is on his way to fulfill his astrological destiny. All he has with him is a sleeping bag, a blue windbreaker, an extra pair of trousers given to him by a Belgian postman whom he met in New Delhi, and a blue shirt Lotta had sewn and sent to him. She embroidered his initials on it in the shape of an easel.
He draws his fingers through his dusty hair, rough like bristles on a broom, and squats in the long afternoon shadows of the acacia trees on the outskirts of a small village. He looks out over the fields. The sun sets in the west, so he knows to make his way towards it. Or rather, north-west. But just how many miles he has ahead of him, he has no idea. He has no grasp of the distance, no knowledge of geography. He would struggle to point on a map to all the countries and cities he had heard named in the Indian Coffee House these past few years.
Stories of the world’s creation, the sky and the gods, these he knows better. Tales of the origins of life and its future destiny, even events from the dawn of human history. He recalls the tales of the Mahabharata, the book all Indian children are made to read at school, and the great battle between two families that took place here thousands of years ago, right where his bicycle is now resting against a tree, on the outskirts of Kurukshetra. It was a fierce and bitter feud over who would control the kingdom. His teacher at primary school used to read it aloud to them. He enjoys these stories, they are a part of him. In that sense, he is as Indian as it is possible to be.
He looks out over the fields where spears were thrown, swords wielded, blood spilled, and the gods summoned for counsel when doubts crept in. The Mahabharata is a book about just war. He recalls a scene in which Prince Arjuna, one of the fighters, pauses and asks the god Krishna for advice. Krishna’s response is so long and thorough, it is considered an independent poem. Go back to the field, Arjuna, because you are a warrior, and warriors fight.
It is advice that has been the cause of so much misery. If only they had asked the Buddha or the Jain prophet Mahavira, the world might be a different place.
In Hindi, the road he is travelling is called the Uttarapatha, meaning the northern route. In Urdu, it is known as Shah Rah-e-Azam. The Grand Trunk Road. The backbone of successive empires, a thoroughfare for kings as well as peasants and beggars, Greeks, Persians, Turks and Central Asians. For thousands of years people have taken this route between Afghanistan in the west and the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers in the east.
Yes, its reputation is both impressive and ominous, but the road itself is not so very grand. Just as narrow and bumpy as every other thoroughfare in India. For two trucks to meet, the same courage and daredevil attitude are required, the same skirting of the asphalt. And along it, the same bellowing monsters of buckled metal slip out beyond the confines of the paved road, throwing up great tempests of sand and gravel that settle in a crackling film over all the other vehicles, pedestrians, grain threshers and ox carts. And bicycles.
Kurukshetra is one of many dreary villages along the way, home to roadside diners hidden behind rows of parked trucks so overfilled with cargo that they look like they might be toppled by the merest prod of a finger. Rickety wooden beds line up beside the trucks, mattresses consisting of nothing but braided rope. Here drivers sit and eat their dinner from metal lunch boxes.
He searches for something that could have borne witness to these ancient stories, but there is nothing old or remarkable about these fields. It’s the same monotony of paddies and rows of wheat that have lined the road all the way from New Delhi.
India has been independent for thirty years, and the Prime Minister is trying to remake the country according to her version of Indian socialism. No longer should the people be fooled by superstition and myth. But as far as PK can tell, the legends have not left their mark, at least, not to the naked eye.
He has eighty US dollars sewn into his waistband and a few hundred rupees in his pocket. He must economize. This money has to last him all the way to Kabul, preferably longer. Who knows, maybe with a little luck he can make it all the way to Europe on just this measly sum.
Surely there are people along the way who can help him?
His address book is full of the names of travellers, vagabonds and hippies. Friends. They have described the special community of people bound together and strung out along the hippy trail. We help each other, they said. We share whatever we have. The thought of this big family keeps his nerves in check, even if there is a constant hum in his stomach. The road ahead will be difficult. But he wants it to be difficult, a struggle before a triumph. He wants the tension to drum a beat inside him. It will all work out.
He understands that he must be patient. Save your strength, he tells himself. Sure, he would like to be in Sweden tomorrow. But in the l
arger scheme of things, he will reach his destination soon. Assuming he makes it that far.
Looking out over the fields, he thinks of his father. Become an engineer, he said. Help build India in Nehru’s vision… A memory bubbles up: Nehru and his daughter Indira arriving by helicopter and landing on a beach on the outskirts of Athmallik, there to inaugurate the construction of a new hydroelectric dam on the Mahanadi River. A dot in the sky that grew and grew until it landed next to the buffaloes and cows with their crooked, bony backs. He remembers the bafflement, that something moments before so small could suddenly become so large. 1964, it must have been.
Thousands of people gathered by the banks of the river to catch a glimpse of the Prime Minister. PK remembers Nehru placed his hand on his heart and looked to be in pain. A few weeks later, the Prime Minister died. Perhaps it was no great surprise, the villagers said; the local goddess Binkej Devi must have cursed him. Damming the river was a serious violation of the sacred will of nature, and Nehru had received his punishment.
But PK did not subscribe to such nonsense. He was fourteen at the time and no longer believed everything his elders told him. People died because they got ill. They had been taught that in school.
But just because the world is not governed by gods and demons does not mean there is no cosmic plan. The power of the stars to rule our lives should not be underestimated.
Nehru also had a plan, but a national, not a cosmic one. India was to pursue material wealth and technological progress. Poverty could be eradicated and superstitions and gods were to be replaced by rational thought and science. The nation would put its faith in socialism rather than religion, in Marx and Einstein rather than Vishnu and Shiva. Modernity must take precedence over tradition. If you had to choose, Nehru said, it was better to throw away the old in favour of the new.
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love Page 15
