And PK’s father agreed. This was the best way to be rid of India’s injustices. His father did not believe in the old superstitions; he too held firm to reason.
But PK had not become the son his father hoped for. Old injustices have to be replaced by something new and more egalitarian, PK agreed. If anyone hated the traditions espoused by the priests it was him, and yet he never really understood mathematics and science. He preferred to draw people rather than calculate equations. He had learnt it at school, and now, finally, he is escaping all that.
That first night, PK lies in his sleeping bag on the edge of a rice paddy. It is January, and northern Indian winters are cold and damp. He listens as dogs bark and trucks thunder past along the narrow, bumpy road with the grand name. He recognises the smell of stagnant water and watches the breath of the drivers caught in the streetlights. He shivers, zips the sleeping bag around his chin and closes his eyes.
He shuts out the sound of the crickets in the grassy ditch and thinks of Lotta. She knows he is coming. He wrote to tell her about his plan. She replied that if anyone knew the route between India and Europe, it was her.
It was an adventure to drive the VW van all the way to India and back, and it will be a tough journey for you, she wrote.
Setbacks are often accompanied by crying. As are stories of the humiliation and oppression of others by those in power, or with money and status. PK is known for being governed by his strong emotions. Moments of joy and laughter are often followed by tears. His friends are more balanced and controlled. He envies them. He is unable to regulate his emotions so well.
Anger seizes him sometimes too. He fights them in his daydreams, all the people who have ever humiliated him. But the desire for revenge has softened. More often it is grief that agitates him these days.
He has arrived in Amritsar. But in his diary he writes:
A week has passed since I was stopped in Kurukshetra. Now my Raleigh and the Grand Trunk Road have taken me to the holy city of the Sikhs with the golden temple. But unfortunately it seems that my adventure is over. I’m going to go see the golden domes and the nectar pond now, then eat dinner in the dining room of the temple given out for free to the poor before starting my ride back to New Delhi. So much for that dream.
Once again, joy has given way to despair. Tears flood his cheeks as a feeling of hopelessness overwhelms him. How can he continue his journey? He is going to have to stop, already. Yesterday, he reached the border with Pakistan. At first, the border guards had refused to let him in. No Indians allowed, they said. Not under any circumstances. They tossed his passport back at him and told him to turn around. But he took out some of the drawings he had made and showed them to the police. He could draw portraits of them, he suggested. Reluctantly, they agreed, and he took out paper and a piece of charcoal. He talked as he drew, telling them about the woman he loved and the country he was going to make his home. Their expressions grew ever more curious, and they began to relax.
It was a great story, and as soon as they saw their grim faces appear on the paper, they smiled. All severity was blown away. Just as he had hoped. It usually worked. To be drawn is to be seen at your best, to be flattered, and it softened even the thickest of skins most of the time.
‘Okay, we’ll let you ride through our country,’ one of the Pakistani officers said.
‘Are you sure we can do that?’ another countered in Urdu, a language of which PK had passing knowledge.
‘Yes, yes, what does it matter? He looks like a kind soul.’
They turned to PK and the man who seemed to be second in command said politely: ‘On you go, sir!’
They opened the bar and he rode into Pakistan.
Half an hour later, he swung his bicycle into a leaky wooden shed with charpoys and glossy painted tables. He got down, and feeling pleased with himself, approached a man with a bare head and sullen countenance who sat in the shade of the jute awning, next to a cabinet of bulbous sweets clouded in a swarm of flies.
He ordered a huge plate of chicken biryani, and gulped down his first meal across the border, sitting on the edge of a charpoy.
He burped, washed his hands, and filled his canteen. Then, just as he mounted his bicycle to continue on, a police jeep swung into the yard in front of him.
‘Passport, passport!’ shouted one of the officers as he jumped out of the rolling vehicle.
PK pulled out his green passport with the King Ashoka lion on the cover, Bharat Ganarajya written in golden Devanagari script and Republic of India in English. They flipped through its pages, from back to front and vice versa, before closing it and turning it upside down. They shook their heads.
The police then pointed to the bike and then to the jeep. PK understood what was being said. They threw the bike on the roof, told him to take a seat in the back, and proceeded to drive him to the border crossing.
All he had to do was ride the fifty kilometres back to Amritsar in India.
If the road to the future had already been determined, it was turning out to be peppered with pitfalls, thought PK, as if some higher power had decided that paradise could only be reached after first conquering seven earthly trials.
He sits on the hostel bed and watches the sun go down behind the rooftops, listening to the cries from the minarets drowning out the crows in the banyan trees. Hope has stirred in him again. His luck has returned.
That morning, he caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd at Guru Bazaar. It was Mr Jain! He worked in the Ministry of Information in Delhi. They had first met a few years before, and it turned out he was also a friend of PK’s older brother. And here they were, bumping into each other in Amritsar.
As the melancholy sound of the minarets chases the darkness into his hostel dormitory, he feels fortunate to know such an educated, high-ranking man.
But he should have met him the day before yesterday. Then he would have dispelled some of PK’s misconceptions. For example, that PK would be able to enter Pakistan, when Indian citizens were blanket forbidden, even when long-haired, pot-smoking hippies from America and England were welcomed with open arms into the Islamic Republic.
He knew he would need a visa for the Shah’s Iran. But to Pakistan? India and Pakistan, two countries that were once one, that shared virtually the same culture, food and language, the same customs. Why was there even a border at all? But he should have known. He is ashamed by his ignorance. The conflict between India and Pakistan filled the papers daily: how could he have missed it?
But in Guru Bazaar that morning, Mr Jain had felt sorry for PK and announced that he wanted to buy him a plane ticket so that he could fly to Kabul without having to cycle through Pakistan. Fly high above the border police and all the earthly problems below.
‘On me,’ he said. It was the least he could do. ‘You’re not just anyone, after all. I’ve read about you in the newspaper.’
PK bowed deeply, shook his hand, knelt down and touched the man’s feet. His lucky cobra, the snake that had been protecting him since he was born, had come to his aid again.
He meets a German hippy at the hostel and shows him the flight ticket. The German is on his way back to Europe with his wife. They are driving a minibus furnished with beds and a small kitchen.
‘Okay, Picasso, we’ll take your bike to Kabul on the roof of our van.’
They give him a cloth pouch to hang around his neck. ‘To keep your passport safe,’ he explains.
Now PK looks almost like all the Germans and other Europeans he has been meeting these last few years. A backpacker, one of the gang out on the hippy trail.
The engines roar. He is pressed into the back of his seat, feels a tickle in his stomach. Later, he would reflect on the moment in his diary:
I look down at Earth from the aircraft and am filled with what I see, the snow-capped mountains, the arid steppes, the green fields; they are all larger and more true than my own life. Everyday problems seem petty from this height, the possibilities are endless and life is as w
ide as the sky. Worries are nothing but dots on a map.
Through the aeroplane window he looks down on empty cities, pavements with no people, roads with no cars.
‘Up in the sky, it is difficult to make out the details down on Earth,’ he writes. ‘This is the first time I travel with a flying machine. I travel far away never to return. I can still not really believe it, but it looks like the prophecy came true.’
Amritsar – Kabul (almost) – Amritsar (again) – Kabul (finally)
Something is wrong. Just as they were about to land in Kabul, the plane started climbing and now they are circling the airport. Nervous, PK gazes out at the brown carpet scored with a grid of roads below. They go even higher and then start flying straight. The shaking ceases and is replaced by an otherworldly murmur. No one says anything over the speakers. After an hour, they are ready for landing and start their descent again.
As he looks out, he sees that they are back in Amritsar. There has been no explanation, and he is too scared to ask. Maybe the weather was too bad in Kabul? Maybe there was a hole in the runway?
He is back in India. Again.
But this time, he does not feel hopeless. They are put up in a luxury hotel at the airline’s expense and given tickets to eat at the gourmet buffet several times a day. The Air India staff make an appearance and promise that flights to Kabul will resume the next day. And he is not disappointed. The next morning his journey restarts, and finally, he lands in Kabul.
The shuttle bus drives along empty boulevards towards the city centre. The roads are edged by trees that have lost their leaves. There is so little traffic in contrast to back home in India. Not that same urban crush. Light grey mountains rest on the horizon, standing against a crisp blue sky.
His mind returns again to Lotta as he watches Kabul slip past the window. This time last year, they were standing together at the railway station in Delhi, about to say goodbye. She was taking the train to Amritsar to meet up with her friends, where they were waiting with the VW van. She was bound for Europe, he was stuck in India. A thick voice came over the tannoy: Two Nine Zero Four Golden Temple Mail bound for Amritsar is at platform number one. The stationmaster rang the bell and blew his whistle, the signal at the end of the platform went from red to green and steam from the engine blasted up high above them.
‘It sounds like a bomb going off,’ Lotta said, and kissed him one last time before climbing onto the train.
‘Yes,’ PK laughed, not yet shattered by his grief.
She hung in the doorway as the train started to roll. He intertwined his left hand in her right, pressed his cheek against hers, and walked quickly as the creaking carriages gradually accelerated. He was so distracted by the softness of her hand and cheek that he did not see the rapidly approaching fence at the end of the platform. Their grand farewell ended as the metal poles struck against his chest, and he fell over. He screamed in pain, scrambled onto all fours, and watched the train disappear as his tears spotted the cracked cement beneath his hands and knees.
The train was gone. Lotta was gone. His future had been ripped from him and was disappearing into the distance.
He cried all the way from the station to the usually crowded street bazaar at Chandni Chowk, now desolate at this hour, just before midnight. He walked under Tilak Bridge and passed Delhi’s old dilapidated fort and zoo, where they had walked only a few days earlier, holding hands. Lotta had been sitting beside him as he painted watercolours of the ruins and caged animals.
A pack of dogs, growing bolder now the sun had set, started rounding on him. They bared their teeth, barked, and drew close. But PK was not scared. Instead, he stopped, planted his feet, took a deep breath and yelled back at them.
‘Eat me then, you mangy mutts! Eat me! I don’t care!’
The dogs closed in, slowly. But something in their growling made PK imagine they were pondering what he had just said. They fell silent and wagged their tails. He opened the remains of his lunch, wrapped in a crumpled newspaper, and fed some of it to them. He sat among the dogs as they ate. All energy had gone from his body and he was numb, exhausted by the crying and the long walk. He lay down on the ground and the dogs rested their heads against his body.
That night, PK and five of Delhi’s fiercest stray dogs huddled together on the pavement outside the city zoo. In his dreams, wild storm winds tore houses from their foundations and violent waves came crashing over him.
Before dawn he was awakened by the shrill screech of shock absorbers and the rattling of chassis as the first morning buses sped past. He sat up and looked around him, dazed. A cold wind had swept away the last of the previous day’s heat. He felt chilled. The dogs, his blanket in the night, had disappeared.
He stumbled the last kilometres home to his rented room in Lodi Colony, where he was still living at the time. He stood in the doorway and looked in on the miserable scene inside: a worn bed, a dresser and a calendar depicting Lakshmi, the goddess of happiness and wellbeing, clinging to the mould-flecked wall.
As Lotta journeyed westward, PK waited for the merest sign of life from her. But his letters went unanswered.
Desperate, he sent telegrams to her home address: ‘I’m worried by your long silence, please write to me when you get back home. PK.’
But Lotta was still on the road. Finally, a letter arrived from Maku in western Iran. ‘My dear friend and companion,’ it began. He read it quickly, starved of her words. The letter described the magic journey, the beauty of the snow-capped mountains on the border between Iran and Turkey, the pale sun, the serenity of Maku, the transparent cold mist and ‘the buzz of insects, nature’s lullaby’.
She wished he could be with her, the letter concluded.
But then why did she leave?
Lotta’s beautiful, poetic letters were unsettling; their mood somehow made him even sadder. Her long, engaged descriptions of places so completely alien carried almost a sinister tone.
He climbs down from the airport bus and starts walking through the throngs of men in ankle-length shirts and women with scarves wrapped around their heads, through the bazaars, and out onto the street with the funny name – Chicken Street, or Khosheh Murgha as the Kabul locals call it. There he finds a cheap-looking hostel.
All the wanderers gather here, with their long hair and their backpacks. They are dirty and bedraggled, as if they have been dragged through all the filthy streets of the world. His hostel is followed by another and another, countless English signs promising cheap accommodation and great service. Then comes a row of cafés and restaurants, menus also in English. He looks out along the street; for every Afghan in traditional dress he can see a white person in tight jeans and a T-shirt.
PK has been recording the trip so far in his diary with the intention of sending extracts to the newspapers in Orissa. He is confident they will be interested.
‘Tens of thousands of Western hippies are heading East and West at any given time, whether they have been in India and are on their way home to Europe or vice versa,’ PK writes. The cafés of Chicken Street are abuzz with stories of the road to Kandahar, where to stay in Herat, the best coffee shops in Mashhad, the top bargains in the markets of Istanbul and how to cope with the traffic chaos in Tehran. A Frenchman explains the itinerary to PK as they drink tea.
‘The hippy trail,’ he clarifies, ‘isn’t one single road, but in fact many that interlock.’
PK shares a room with four Europeans. It feels like they belong together. Everyone helps each other. He has met several of the other guests before in New Delhi.
‘Hey, PK!’ he hears people call out on the street, from cafés, in bazaars.
He hugs them, drinks cup after cup of tea, tells them what he’s been up to and where he’s going and listens to their stories in return. He asks about their upset stomachs, while they tell him how brave he is and how they wish him well on his long journey.
Some of the European girls wear shorts. The Afghan men stare so they do not see where they are going, c
olliding with each other on street corners. A Swedish girl he met several times in India walks towards him in thin balloon pants with bells around her feet. She is a thrilling sight for the local men, as she tinkles past like a tambourine. The men laugh and cast their eyes up to the heavens.
He is reluctant to rip open the seam in his trousers and start on the eighty dollars he has stashed. He is saving them. So he goes to give blood, as it is well paid. And he sits in the teahouses drawing people. It always works. People are curious, approach him, start asking questions, and are delighted when they see the results. It looks just like him! They laugh, point and shake his hand. They want to be drawn too, when he is done. And they pay handsomely.
The editor from The Kabul Times is impressed. He wants to see the other drawings leaning against the cement wall under the coffee table. PK shows him Afghan tribal women with their heavy silver jewellery and nose rings, as well as bearded Bedouin riding camels. The editor says he wants to interview him.
‘Of course,’ PK replies. He is used to journalists and knows the importance of publicity for a struggling artist.
The interview appears a few days later. The picture shows PK holding up one of his paintings of an emaciated black woman breastfeeding her equally starved child next to a white statue of the Virgin Mary and plump baby Jesus. Faces fascinate me, says Indian portraitist. The text is both courteous and admiring in tone:
Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia was the unusual caller at The Kabul Times offices last week. On his way to a round the world tour, the young portraitist from India came to Kabul recently on a fortnight visit.
‘Faces fascinate me more than anything else. They attract me, vex me, provoke me,’ says the soft-spoken, unassuming Mahanandia. His strongest desire is to paint human tragedy bringing out the inequality of one being and another. ‘No matter rich or poor, all are starving for something or other,’ he says.
He earns a living from making sketches. ‘I want to specialize in portraits and miniatures. Sketching is just a side business to keep myself going,’ he added.
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love Page 16
