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

by Per J Andersson

  The money PK earned from his portraits went towards paints and canvases, which enabled him to make ever larger artworks with a greater variety of techniques and subject matter. Most were sold to foreign tourists by the fountain or inside the Indian Coffee House.

  Haksar had promised to arrange an apartment for PK, but was taking his time. In the meantime, PK rented a small room in Lodi Colony, one of the city’s more affluent suburbs just south of a large, leafy park, home to a grand mausoleum to the medieval sultans of Delhi. But his new accommodation was anything but grand. The bare room contained only a bed and a bedside table, three hooks screwed into the unpainted cement wall for hanging his clothes on, and a couple of square metres of floor space for hosting his homeless friends.

  He was starting his third and final year at art school and was often the talk of the canteen. The other students increasingly regarded him as some sort of guru. Even the teachers and experienced visiting artists more than twice his age came to ask him for advice. They wanted to know about technique, what materials he used, whether his parents were famous artists, about his thoughts on art in general and what Indira Gandhi was really like in person.

  One of the students from the year below was especially keen to make contact. She did not say much at first, but PK thought he could sense she wanted something. Finally, she gathered her courage and introduced herself.

  ‘My name is Puni,’ she said softly, as if ashamed to be so forthright.

  But her question was surprisingly direct:

  ‘Will you have lunch with me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ PK responded without thinking. He rarely said no to an invitation. But Puni seemed to doubt his sincerity.

  ‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You are a bit! I’m in the middle of work. But it’s a nice distraction to be invited to lunch by you.’

  After a pleasant meal in the school cafeteria, she invited him home.

  ‘My mother wants to meet you,’ she said. ‘Can you come by on Sunday?’

  ‘Your mother? Why does she want to meet me?’

  ‘She wants you to do her portrait.’

  The traffic, which consisted mainly of Ambassador cars, imaginatively painted trucks and worn-out buses, crept like cold syrup. It mixed lugubriously with a stream of bicycle rickshaws pouring out of the narrow streets around the Jama Masjid market. PK sat on the passenger bench in the back of a pedal rickshaw, gazing out at the chaos and the crowds. It was a wonderful feeling. He had never before allowed himself the extravagance of being driven by a bicycle taxi, to sit and watch as a man carried him forward on pure strength alone. He thought of the landowners, merchants and Brahmins accustomed to having servants wait on them, as if they somehow deserved it. In that moment, he felt he deserved it too, to have a man do the heavy work for him.

  They snaked through the increasingly dense throng at Chandni Chowk, past jewellers, fabric shops, signs advertising chilled tap water and photographers with their wooden box cameras taking pavement portraits. The rickshaw driver swerved into alleys, dodging cyclists, wandering goats, other bicycle taxis, wobbly cows, yapping dogs, women in grey scarves and men with crocheted skullcaps. They passed holes in the walls and jute sacks filled with flour and chillies. It was an exhilarating sight.

  Delhi’s markets still felt like exotic fairytales for the boy from the jungle. The city smelled of history and power, but also overcrowding and poverty. The air stank of the black, sticky mud that festered in the open sewers, but it was also mixed with the seductively sweet scent of patchouli smoke from courtyards flaunting their syrupy mangoes and figs.

  Finally, he had arrived. He got out, paid a handsome tip to quell his bad conscience, and knocked on the old wooden door.

  ‘Welcome!’ came a voice from behind the door. It was Puni.

  She looked tense. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘Water is fine,’ PK replied.

  She giggled. She was nervous, PK realized.

  ‘Tea or coffee then.’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  All was quiet. He looked around. The walls were decorated with pictures of India’s superstar actors and actresses, and fashion magazines covered the coffee table. Puni returned with a glass of water on a tray. A smell filled the room. She must have made a detour via the bathroom and sprayed on more perfume. The sweet scent of jasmine and roses tickled his nostrils. He looked at her. She looked different. She was wearing a shiny salwar kameez, her cheeks were daubed with rouge and her lips painted red. She wanted to look older, gone was the sincere and undecorated art student.

  He gulped down the water.

  ‘Where is your mother? I can start right away.’

  ‘Oh, my mother had to leave just before you arrived. Something came up… something urgent at work.’

  He suspected at once something was not right.

  ‘Wait, she’ll be back,’ Puni said in a gentle voice.

  But he was uneasy and decided he had to leave at once.

  ‘Sundays are my best day at the fountain. The customers will be waiting. I have to go make my living. Goodbye!’ he said and left.

  ‘Good morning!’

  He recognized the voice behind him. He turned in the corridor. It was Puni again.

  ‘My mother bought two tickets for the movies tonight, the late show at the Plaza. But she changed her mind and doesn’t want to come with me. Do you want to come instead?’

  ‘What film?’

  ‘I don’t know, but my mother is very selective.’

  ‘Let me think about it. See you at lunch.’

  He went to his studio to tidy up the previous day’s mess. Screwed the caps on some tubes of paint that had leaked onto the table. Threw away a brush that was caked in dried paint. Cleaned another two with turpentine. Stared at a half-finished painting and examined the sketches strewn all over the floor. Then he picked up a brush and started to paint.

  He tried to picture Puni, but could not. A veil seemed to descend over his eyes. He heard sounds, muffled then high pitched. It was as if the colours in the painting were speaking to him, as if they were people. They did not articulate words as such, rather chords and tones that represented different feelings. He worked fast, with zeal and energy.

  The school bell rang for lunchtime, but he continued as if nothing had happened. Suddenly, someone appeared at the door. He saw a faint shadow moving in the glare of the wet paint on his canvas. He carried on, pretending he had not seen it. He knew who it was and he was not happy, which surprised him. She was interrupting him and he wanted to be alone.

  ‘That’s a really fantastic painting,’ Puni said, stepping into the light streaming through the large studio windows. He turned to look at her.

  ‘So, do you want to come tonight?’ she asked.

  He giggled, uncertain.

  ‘Wait one moment!’ he said, and ran out into the corridor, down the stairs and into Tarique’s studio on the floor below.

  Tarique was sitting at his table, working on an illustration.

  ‘Puni, from the first year, she wants to go out with me tonight…’ PK started.

  Tarique looked up.

  ‘… So, should I go?’ he continued breathlessly. ‘She suggested going to the cinema.’

  PK looked expectantly at his friend.

  Tarique sighed.

  ‘Jesus, Pradyumna, she’s not going to kidnap you! Go have some fun!’

  They waved down a motorcycle rickshaw and rode together to the cinema. They were going to see Ajanabee, a story about a middle-class boy who falls for a rich and beautiful upper-class girl. They sat down in the back on a cracked vinyl two-seater sofa. The dramatic opening music came blasting through the loudspeakers. It turned out to be a shocking tale. The girl fell pregnant but did not want to keep the child – how un-Indian, PK thought – because she wanted to become a model. The couple split and the girl moved back home to her father. The shame.

  He like
d the outdoor scenes, the singing and dancing. It was the most romantic movie on release at the time, that much he understood. He was lost in the spectacle until Puni wrenched him back to reality by reaching out and searching for his hand. Their fingers interlocked.

  ‘My mother asked me where you keep all the money you earn from your art,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘If you want, she can take care of it for you.’

  ‘No need, I opened a bank account,’ he whispered back.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. The screen was alight with a passionate love scene. The hero kissed his girl, one of those typical Indian film kisses where everything is left to the imagination. Still, he squirmed with embarrassment, shook a little even. She squeezed his hand even harder.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he hissed back.

  ‘But you’re shaking.’

  ‘It’s cold. I’m cold.’

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘No it’s not.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and sighed heavily.

  He felt confused, uneasy, weak even.

  ‘I haven’t… ever thought about love,’ he faltered.

  ‘Now you can,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he tried again, ‘according to the customs of my village, you can’t fall in love unless you’re married.’

  The moustached leading man shot at a pickpocket who had just stolen his jewel-laden bag. The thief fell to the ground, dead.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Write a letter to your father and I will ask my parents. My mother likes you, she will convince my father. And then we can get married.’

  She continued: ‘You make a living from your art and I… well, I will also be an artist. We can be very happy together.’

  He did not know what to say. All these dreams and plans. Maybe she was right? Maybe she was his future? Maybe he should write to his father and ask permission to get married? He was unsure how he really felt, but perhaps this was his fate. Everything happens for a reason.

  Luckily, the ending of the film was a happy one, or he might have cried; with the couple reunited, the credits finally rolled.

  They left the cinema hand in hand, hailed a rickshaw and rattled along the Vivekananda Road, glittering in the rain, towards Old Delhi. She jumped off near the Great Mosque and the rickshaw turned south towards his rented room in the suburbs.

  Once home, he began to write a letter to his father. Puni’s proposal sounded good, he thought, despite his somewhat conflicting emotions. She was right! She must have been the woman the astrologer meant. She certainly was not from his village or state. Not exactly from another country, but close enough.

  A girl had fallen in love with him, he wrote, and they wanted to marry. Would his father give them permission?

  He rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock. Half past midnight. He lay down on his bed, his thoughts spinning. A pack of wild dogs barked as they passed outside. The sound of a creaking bicycle came and disappeared. The rain had stopped and the window cast a milky white square of light on his dirty cement floor.

  It had all been decided… And he drifted off to sleep.

  The entrance hall to Puni’s home was thick with the smell of spices; paratha, chicken curry, palak paneer, aloo ghobi. He was amazed to think that all this food had been prepared for him, that they had made such an effort for his sake. The dining room table was invisible under the sheer number of plates and bowls. There was no space left even for the napkins, which their servant girl had instead placed on a side table draped in a floral cloth.

  He was starving.

  ‘Namaste,’ he said, placing his palms together as he bent down and touched her father’s feet, a greeting he thought would satisfy any would-be father-in-law.

  ‘Welcome, brother. Stand up,’ Puni’s father replied. ‘We are modern people, let’s shake hands instead.’

  They were joined around the table by Puni’s two brothers and their wives, while Puni sat in the next room behind a door covered by a curtain, where she could still hear their conversation.

  This was how it was done, he knew that, but at the same time, it seemed absurd. He was here to be interviewed by her parents, not to see her.

  But I’m supposed to be marrying Puni, not her father, he remembers thinking.

  And her father’s first question? ‘What is your caste?’

  PK felt his cheeks grow hot. This was not a good start. He knew the family belonged to a high caste. If they were traditional, there was no way he would be accepted as their son-in-law. Yet her father had just said they were modern people.

  PK answered with a question. ‘Do you believe in the caste system?’ Full on counterattack was his only chance. Before Puni’s father could answer, he continued: ‘What does caste matter? I may have been born in a tribal region and my father may be untouchable, but the blood in my veins is still the same colour as your daughter’s, is it not? We share the same interests. I hope we can be happy together.’

  Puni’s father looked him in the eye. No doors had yet been closed. A positive outcome was still within the realms of possibility.

  ‘You were born in a tribal area to an untouchable family?’

  PK did not answer this question.

  ‘And my daughter is already in love with you?’

  Everyone in the room fell silent. No one moved or made a sound, not even to clear their throat.

  PK thought he heard her father’s slow breathing and the sound of his own pulse. He looked around. All smiles were gone, faces flickered with uncertainty.

  Finally, Puni’s mother broke the silence. Or rather, the sound of her hand slapping against her forehead did: ‘Oh my God!’

  Her father stood up, pointed at the door. ‘Please leave my house!’ he bellowed. ‘Now! And never, ever contact my daughter again!’

  PK stood up and walked out with barely a whispered goodbye.

  Sobbing, he threw himself down on his bed. After the first violent convulsions of emotion had eased, he continued to lie there for some time, staring up at the ceiling. He was destroyed, empty and small. Memories of his school days in Athmallik came rushing back, the exclusion and rejection. That familiar feeling of inferiority had been secretly lying in wait, under the surface, demanding to be set free. His heart pounded, his skin burned, sweat drenched his body. He shook as if engulfed by fever.

  He lay there for the rest of the night, his thoughts churning: Why, why, why was I born untouchable?

  He saw her again a few days later, while he was drinking tea in the school café. She was talking to a male student. He approached but she turned away and left with the other man.

  At lunch they ran into each other again. This time she made eye contact.

  ‘Forget me!’ she said quickly. She neither believed in, nor cared about, the caste system, but her father did, she explained. ‘I cannot defy my father.’

  He was dumbstruck.

  ‘Did you see the guy I was talking to?’ Puni said. ‘He’s reading engineering. My father had already arranged for us to marry, but he was prepared to change his mind because I told him that I was in love with you. But that was before he knew anything about your background.’

  PK stared at her in amazement. She had pursued him so relentlessly, and yet within a few days, had agreed to marry someone else.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said.

  ‘Do you love him?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied without moving a muscle in her face.

  What kind of love was this? She’s lying, PK thought. She’s scared to defy her father.

  ‘Puni, listen! I’ll fight for us. Legally, no one can stop us. Not your father, not your family. We can get married without any of your relatives or a priest if need be, and then we can move to a place where no one can find us, where no one knows about us, or even cares.’

  But she did not seem to be listening. She turned her head and her eyes flickered as she glanced down the
corridor and into the canteen.

  ‘Don’t ever talk to me again,’ she interrupted. ‘Forget about me!’

  ‘Don’t you like me any more?’

  ‘I like you, but I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Why not, Puni?’

  ‘I can’t make my father unhappy.’

  PK had read in the newspapers about the Dalit Panthers from Bombay. Inspired by the Black Panthers in America, they had written a manifesto in which they claimed that Brahmin control of India was worse than British colonialism, just as his grandfather and father used to say. Hindu leaders held tight onto both the entire state apparatus and an inherited feudal power in the form of spiritual oppression, they wrote. ‘We will not be easily satisfied now. We do not want a little place in the Brahmin alley,’ their manifesto declared.

  The untouchables had their own newspaper, Dalit Voice, in which the Dalit Panthers likened their discrimination to racism against blacks in the United States. African-Americans would never be free, they claimed, as long as their blood brothers and sisters in Asia were still suffering. Indeed, the Dalits were in an even more desperate situation, which could be compared to the height of slavery two hundred years earlier. PK was at home in his room in Lodi Colony, screaming at the walls:

  ‘You Brahmins and the rest of you high-caste snobs! You prejudiced, stuck-up, narrow-minded creeps! What have we ever done to you?’

  He could not sleep for all the hateful thoughts coursing through his head. He woke at four and lay in bed, wrestling with these voices, until the sun rose three hours later. Anger was followed by bitterness and self-pity.

  A thin green book with yellowed paper, cloudy ink and slightly sloping text lay on his bedside table. He picked it up and began reading, to forget Puni.

  One day, in Kerala, southern India, Shiva

  decided to teach the Brahmins a lesson.

  Ah, this is perfect, PK thought, and continued reading.

  Shiva, the book said, wanted to put a stop to the overblown pride of the Kerala Brahmins and decided to humiliate the highest and brightest of them all, the exalted spiritual teacher Adi Shankaracharya.