‘Sorry! No money. Come back in a month and see.’
His first year at the art college started so positively, but it quickly came to be characterized by poverty, hunger and anxiety about where he would spend the night. For the first three months he stayed with various school friends. But he did not want to trespass on their hospitality for too long. After a while, he began to sleep on the floor of New Delhi railway station along with the day labourers, the disabled, the beggars and families from the country waiting for the dawn trains. The station was full of people wrapped in blankets, big bags made from sheet metal, jute sacks filled with grain and straw, milk pots, farm implements and sometimes the occasional goat.
It was warmer and more comfortable inside the station than out on the streets. Delhi nights were not as hot as at home in the village; they were rather damp and at times bitterly cold. Moreover, he could wash in the station toilets, and therefore did not have to attend classes stinking of sweat.
Some evenings, however, he was too tired to walk all the way to the station. Those nights he crawled inside a nearby telephone booth and fell asleep.
Aged eighteen, Lotta moved by herself to London to study nursing and undertake her practical training in a local hospital. She needed no moral support, no friend to hold her hand. On the contrary. It felt liberating to go alone.
She got a job at a renowned hospital in Hampstead, where the long-term patients and staff were like family. Lotta had chief responsibility for an old and very sick man who wanted to be addressed as Sir.
‘Promise me, Lotta, never, ever let yourself turn hard inside,’ he said, holding her hand, on her last day.
She has carried this advice with her all her life.
In London she ate Indian food in small neighbourhood restaurants where the aroma of cumin and chilli scratched at her nose. She went to the Royal Festival Hall to see the Indian Odissi dancers with bells around their ankles and to the Royal Albert Hall to see George Harrison and Ravi Shankar’s concert for world peace. For a short while, she even dated an Indian immigrant from Delhi.
And then there was the photo diary she found at the hospital. One of the pictures was of a large, stone wheel. It looked to be very old and was fringed with small sculptures of humans and elephants. She tore out the picture and stuck it to the wall above the bed in her lodgings. In the evenings she lay, staring at it.
‘It’s as if the wheel is pulling me,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘as if the image is speaking to me, deep inside, about something big that I have known, but have forgotten.’
PK started skipping class. The days he could not afford to eat, he was too tired to listen to the teachers or complete the exercises they set. Instead, he took to walking aimlessly around town. He often ended up in the area around Connaught Place, a large roundabout in the centre of the city surrounded by white colonial houses with columns and arcades. This was where the best restaurants and fanciest shops were located. In the middle of the roundabout was a park with a lawn, bushes, a fountain and a pond. In its own peculiar way, it smelled of the metropolis: the stench of stagnant water, diesel fumes and human waste mixed with the sweet incense of flowers and fruit stalls, as well as the cigarette smoke from the porters who lay on the grass inhaling bidis.
Next to the park, in one of the squat, white buildings, was the Indian Coffee House. This was where the capital’s students, journalists and intellectuals gathered. A new kind of guest had recently started making an appearance, the European hippy. They parked their painted VW vans and converted postal trucks outside, bearing slogans, such as INDIA EXPEDITION 1973–74, NEXT STOP HIMALAYAS and OVERLAND MUNICH–KATHMANDU TOUR.
PK went to the Indian Coffee House almost every evening. He liked the atmosphere and the mix of people. Signs on the walls explained that the café was a member of the Indian Coffee Workers Cooperative. He looked up at the sepia advertisements from the 1950s: ‘A fine man…’ (a proud coffee farmer with a white beard and cotton cap), ‘…a fine coffee’ (coffee beans) and finally the punchline, ‘and both are Indian!’ The waiters wore white pajamas with broad green and yellow belts and headdresses adorned with fans of starched, snow-white cotton. They ran barefoot on the rough coconut fibre mat and served hot, black coffee and tea with thick buffalo milk in white porcelain cups and saucers. Here, he used to sit for hours nursing a cup of tea, a pencil and a sketchpad.
He drew both waiters and guests, but especially the foreigners. Bearded, long-haired guys with cotton scarves and shirts in Indian patterns. Girls with henna-dyed hair dressed in jeans and tight T-shirts or colourful, baggy cotton shirts. Sometimes he would offer them his drawings, but he was too shy to ask for money. A cup of tea was enough. Some guests gave him a few coins nevertheless, which he used to buy paper, paints and brushes. Others asked if he was hungry, and took him to eat deep-fried samosas, pakoras, chickpeas and potatoes fried in spices and served in small bowls made of dried leaves.
When PK could no longer afford canvas and oil paint, he settled instead for thin copy paper, brown wrapping paper and black ink, which he bought for a few paisa in the narrow streets behind Connaught Place. He began to draw people on the verge of starvation, expressionistic depictions of poverty that frightened those he showed them to. For PK, famine was an important subject. The scratchy ink lines perfectly conveyed how it felt to be hungry. He was giving voice to the world’s starved masses. Drawing the suffering of others alleviated his own and afforded him some moments of temporary relief.
He stopped paying his school fees, and after six months was deleted from the student register. His teachers did not mind if he continued to sit in on classes, but it felt pointless and so he stopped going. He even stopped making art altogether. He had more important things to do, such as obtain food.
After four days without eating, his stomach began cramping. It was as if a rope had been tied around it. The pain grew in intensity, surging before releasing again and turning back into a general, background ache of hunger. The physical effects were schizophrenic: he was listless and depressed one minute, lively the next. When his energy was up, his mind fixated on food. He pictured freshly made chapatis, steaming paneer and large bowls of cauliflower doused in thick, hearty sauces.
He wandered aimlessly in search of anything to eat. On one of his worst days, as he was drifting along Ferozeshah Road in Delhi’s upmarket government district, he encountered a powerful aroma of spices. He could not stop himself. A wall surrounded the stately bungalow, but the gate was open. He looked inside. In the courtyard, marquees had been erected and furnished with long tables covered in red tablecloths. He saw waiters in white turbans and blue jackets running to and fro, carrying trays laden with gold-edged glasses, and musicians wearing dark blue jackets with glittering decorations as they played on scratched brass instruments.
PK was naturally cautious, he did not do things that were illegal or could get him into trouble. But hunger had crushed all such integrity. He stepped into the courtyard where the wedding party was in full swing. Hundreds of guests were chatting and eating from the buffet. Spinach lamb, cheese in red chilli sauce, tandoori chicken drumsticks with mint sauce, golden samosas, chickpea masala in yogurt, potato and cauliflower dip with cumin and coriander, chapatis, nan, pakoras…
His stomach was cramping. It was now or never. He took a plate, piled it high with food, and retreated to a corner.
He ate like a starving dog. He tried to restrain himself but could not. Worried he would be seen, he kept turning and looking around him. But no one was looking. Everyone was busy enjoying their meal.
Once his plate was empty and his stomach full, he sneaked towards the exit. Three more steps and he would have made it, undetected. Then, a tap on the shoulder. Forceful, authoritative.
He froze, felt panic wash over him.
That’s it, he thought, I’m headed for a police cell. Then I’ll be sent back to Orissa, and all the shame and humiliation that awaits me there.
‘Coffee or tea, sir?’
; He turned. It was one of the waiters, with his gold embroidered waistcoat and white turban. At first PK did not understand what the man had said. He had not mentioned the police, he realized. Tea or coffee? Was that really what he said? A pulse of pure joy surged through him.
‘No, thank you,’ PK stammered. Satisfied no one else was watching, he ran out into the street and scampered between the Ambassador cars and scooters parked along the tree-lined street.
He ran up to Mandi House roundabout and then sailed along the wide avenue up towards Connaught Place. He stopped only when he was at the Indian Coffee House. Panting, he took a moment’s rest. He smiled. The dull ache in his stomach was gone.
Some days he ate only jamu berries that grew on the trees along Parliament Street. In the autumn, after the monsoon rains, they dripped with purple-blue pearls. When no one picked the berries, they fell onto the pavement, staining it with pools of wine red. They were sweet and gave him energy. He washed them down with water from street taps. But eventually he became so sick that he burned with fever and his body sank from fatigue. He was unable to hold down the little food he managed to find.
He rapidly lost weight and his vision began to suffer. His whole being was now focused solely on the pursuit of stilling his hunger.
Autumn turned to winter and night temperatures sunk to just a few degrees. He slept under Minto Bridge by Connaught Place, and warmed himself beside fires of burning leaves. He had no friends left. Indifference was like an infestation crawling inside him. He could not even muster the energy to draw people in the café. Instead, he took to writing pleading letters to his father asking for money. When he heard nothing back, he wondered if his letters had arrived. Surely salvation was on its way?
When spring came, the warmth returned. Summer followed with its blistering heat. Temperatures in Delhi were approaching forty-five degrees, bubbles formed in the asphalt, pavements were deserted between dawn and dusk, and he felt sick day and night. His stomach hurt constantly and once again his thoughts turned to suicide.
Delhi, India, the world! He was more and more convinced that in actual fact, he belonged nowhere. He was poor wherever he went, equally useless and unwanted.
My birth, my whole existence, has been nothing but a mistake.
It was time to end the pain. He walked as if in a trance, his legs shaking, towards the Yamuna River. As the water once more rushed against his skin, he hoped desperately that he would never have to get out again.
But halfway to the bottom of the brown, filthy river, PK’s subconscious took over. He fought his way to the surface for air, just the same as last time. His body refused to obey. It was as if his limbs were controlled by another force, which would not give up on him.
He crawled up onto the riverbank and started walking along the searingly hot streets. He did not know where he was going, but somehow he ended up at a set of railroad tracks. This was where he would put an end to it all. He would rest his head against the rails and wait.
But the metal was red-hot in the afternoon sun. He leapt up. The burn mark on his neck throbbed and he understood the folly of his plan.
Instead, he sat down.
I’ll jump out in front of the next train, he said to himself. Only two steps, and it will all be over. So simple, so easy. Was that all it took to go from one world to the next?
Hours passed, but no train arrived. What was going on? Eventually a man approached along the track, cloaked in twilight. PK stopped him to ask if he worked for Indian Railways.
‘Yes, I’m a train driver,’ he said.
‘So why aren’t you driving trains?’
‘Don’t you read the papers?’
‘No.’
‘We’re on strike.’
‘Strike?’
‘You can’t sit here. Go home to your wife!’
‘But I don’t have a home to go to, and no wife. I’m so hungry my stomach hurts. Why do you think I’m sitting here?’
The driver shrugged and disappeared.
Moments later, a policeman came the same way.
‘Go away, before I lock you up!’ he shouted, shaking his wooden baton.
The next day he came across a copy of The Times of India and started reading. A railway strike, he read, led by George Fernandes, the president of the railway workers’ union. Fernandes had persuaded several other industries to down tools in solidarity. Seventeen million Indians in total. Their anger was directed against rabid inflation, corruption, food shortages – and ultimately the Indira Gandhi government. It was potentially the largest strike in history, one columnist wrote.
I’m not the only one on the verge of collapse, he thought. The whole of India is breaking down.
Imagine, the largest strike in history had saved his life. He was not meant to die, at least not yet. A higher power had plans for him, and he had to respect that.
It could not be a coincidence that these suicide attempts repeatedly failed. He must instead focus on the prophecy. What did it say? A woman from a foreign country. He recalled the English woman who had visited his school, with her yogurt skin and floral dress. There was someone out there, looking for him. She was his destiny.
Her image grew in his mind. She became giant, occupying more and more of his waking time. And yet, it was to be an Indian friend who would pull PK out of his hunger and delirium. As for the woman from the prophecy, he would have to wait.
PK started returning to class. His attendance was sporadic at first, but then he met Narendra. They started going to the Indian Coffee House together, where Narendra would buy him tea.
‘And maybe something to eat?’ PK suggested.
Narendra was a medical student and, like PK, untouchable and alone in Delhi. He had gained a place to study medicine as part of the low-caste quotas, and he was doing well. Better certainly than most of the Brahmin students who refused to associate with him. The first day they met, PK told him about the hardships, the hunger and the despair of recent months. Narendra comforted him and gave him money so he could start eating more regularly, something other than the berries and leftovers that had been his only sustenance of late. After two weeks, the fever disappeared.
‘You’ve probably been suffering from a shigella infection,’ Narenda said, ‘a malignant salmonella bacteria. Otherwise known as Delhi belly.’
‘What should I do?’
‘It will get better by itself. As long as you eat and look after yourself.’
Just a few more weeks of hunger, one more step into the abyss, and he would have faded away forever. He was sure of this. One more week of berries and dirty water, and the illness would have broken him.
After his meeting with Narendra, even the scholarship money, which had so mysteriously vanished, reappeared. Good fortune begot more good fortune. PK’s father began to answer his letters with excuses about how he had not understood how bad things had been for his son. His first letter in months contained an extra one hundred rupee note, which would be enough to cover food for a week if PK was careful.
He began to pay his school fees and attend lessons again. His desire to learn had returned and colour flooded back into PK’s life. He was eager to make new friends. One of the other students had also been forced to sleep rough, and PK used to meet him under Minto Bridge. However, PK was to become close to someone who could never imagine what it meant to starve.
The majority of his classmates came from rich families. Not merely the middle class, but from the capital’s political and economic elite. One had a father who was the head of the Indian Postal Service, another was the daughter of the Indian ambassador to Bulgaria, a third came from a rich Parsi family from Bombay. Her style was metropolitan, with an attitude to match.
‘I grew up in the heart of Bombay,’ she would say, flicking her long hair behind her as she spat chewing gum out onto the floor.
PK was shy around her. He felt inferior in her company. How could he assert himself when faced with such self-confidence and entitlement?
As l
ong as the students spoke English with each other, he felt a bit better. On the occasions he received more money than was required to fill his stomach, he bought the Reader’s Digest, perfect for expanding his vocabulary. In Hindi, things were more difficult, and conversation became more uncertain. He had a decent understanding of the language, but struggled with the Devanagari alphabet, which was different from the one used to write his native Oriya. He lived in constant fear that someone would point to something written down and ask him to read it out loud.
But PK wanted to overcome these feelings of inferiority and so he began chatting to a young man in the school café who looked like he might be Muslim, and therefore would not be so concerned with his caste. PK’s guess turned out to be correct.
‘My name is Tarique, Tarique Beg,’ he said in refined English, before boasting that he had come first in the school entrance exam. ‘Although, that was not my own doing,’ he added.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ask my father,’ Tarique said, without a hint of pretension.
‘Your father?’
‘My father, Mirza Hameedullah Beg. Haven’t you heard of him?’
‘The name sounds familiar… Is he famous?’
‘He’s a judge of the Supreme Court.’
‘Oh, Tarique, you are the son of a powerful man.’
‘Yes. Unfortunately.’
‘Unfortunately?’
In each other they found a common interest in philosophy. But neither was attracted to the Hindu scriptures that so enraptured the Brahmins. They spurred each other on to read the texts of Buddhism and Jainism, as well as those written by Sufi mystics. They would sit for hours in the school café, talking about human nature and how to expand consciousness, only to look up suddenly and find the janitor had come to close the school for the day.
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love Page 7