A lover called P.K. - The love-story that deserves telling before it becomes a legend

I have loved every person I love since I have loved them with a passion constant and fervor deep, all my life. But, when it comes to conjugal love and the stories, well, I am quite ambivalent about it. I am usually a skeptic of those. A tough-nosed, rational skeptic about love-legends! Yet, as far as I remember, I have always been in love! This true story is not about me but it involves me in killing that skeptic I housed with a single terrible blow!

Here is the love-story of a man who cycled four months and three weeks from New Delhi to Gothenburg. An inconceivable feet! He pedaled through the land-locked mountains of Afghanistan, abreast Turkey – the natural bridge of the old world continents and Iran and its mysteries landscapes. Why does a man need go to such lengths? For Love and love alone! But, it is not the heart of story. The indomitable heart of man, determined in love and unshakeable in faith, is the beating heart of tale!

P.K. Mahanandia and Charlotte Von Sledvin 

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Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia was born on 1949 in an untouchable Oriya weaver family in Kandhapada. It is one of the poorest villages in the most economically backward state in the country, Orissa. Being an Oriya myself, although born to better fortunes, I know what it means. Ordinarily, it means that P.K. was to go to a school with inept teachers, drop out before college, find work in the village or neighborhood and confine his efforts to gathering his square-meals. Although such simplicity is beautiful, this was not to be!

His father was the care-taker of the royal elephant. Pradyumna controlled the elephant. He rode it in the forests. His heart, however, was set on art. From getting inspired by his mother’s wall-art in their mud-house to being celebrated for his own art in the UN greeting cards, his journey is a curious one. Art became his worship, women his goddesses.

After opting out of art colleges because he could not pay fees and returning to his home town, P.K. was offered a scholarship by the Orissa government to study at Delhi College of arts. The struggle to survive continued as he remained homeless, walked barefoot and barely had stomachful once a day. He roamed around the Coffee House area of New Delhi which is Palika Bazar now until a friend Tariq Beg offered him a place.

Soon, he began to make portraits and his name grew. His portraits became a talking point in the national dailies. Charlotte Von Sledvin, a noble heiress in Sweden, had always been fascinated with India. She was pulled by a strange force, impelled towards India with foreshadow in mind that her destiny lies here. In 1975, barely a week after getting her driving licence, She bought a van and took the hippy trails from Sweden to New Delhi, a journey of 7000 kilometers which she covered in 22 days. It was through the same route her valiant husband would take to reach back to her, two years later.

A portrait of Charlotte by P. K. Mahanandia

Charlotte got her portrait done and paid for it. Then, she began to visit the fountain at the Connaught place where P.K. made his portraits. P.K. was a humble man, grateful for her appreciation and spoke of his affection without gestures or words. One morning, she brought him a red rose. P.K. surprised her with the question, ‘Are you a Taurian? My father practices some astrology and he has said that I will marry a westerner of Taurus Zodiac.’ Even before the exchange, they had demonstrated in silence their deep affections. In a recent interview, where they still made each other blush in their 60s, Charlotte recollects that she had been receiving signs but meeting P.K. was the culmination to all that she had felt since being a teenager. Marriage was an eventuality.  

P.K. decided to take his wife to receive the blessings of his parents. On the way, he decided to surprise her by making a stop at Sun temple of Konark where, Tagore describes, the language of stones surpasses the language of men. He blindfolded her till they reached the famous wheel. When her blindfold opened and she saw the wheel, she could not take her eyes off. A trickle of tear ran down her cheeks. It was the same image she had framed in her room in Sweden since childhood, simply out of fascination and knowing not what it was! Charlotte embraced P.K. and locked her lips with his, which P.K. describes as their first ‘spiritual kiss’.

Charlotte’s visa expired and she had to return, leaving her husband who was bound in contract to finish his studies. She offered him flight tickets to come to Sweden but he declined. He said he would come on his own, as a male principle of this simple man. But, at the end of his studies, he realized that he had all of 80 dollars. Although he couldn’t get a flight ticket, he could afford to buy a used bicycle. Then, began the trip he never turnaround from – a long odyssey of true fulfillment.

The route that P.K. took to reach Sweden. This is the same route Netaji Bose took to travel to Europe.

P.K. never knew that Charlotte was the daughter of Swedish lord. They hadn’t ever discussed the status of their families! Charlotte recalls the day - May 20^th, 1977 when P.K. showed up at the Swedish border. The immigration officials found P.K.’s version incredulous. Although he showed the photographs of their wedding, It baffled their imagination to comprehend that a dark ragged man who has made his trip through a bicycle is married to a noble heiress. They decided to verify for themselves. Charlotte not just confirmed their wedlock but she came all the way to the border to welcome her husband with love and respect while the officials remained struck in awe and bemusement.

Charlotte’s parents knew and were prepared for it.  They were touched by the courage and dedication of this man.  “A traditional written law has it that black people are not permitted to stay where nobility stays. This means they had to break the racial rule to make space for me in the family, which they did gracefully for their daughter,” Mahanandia says. They got married through traditional Swedish royal ceremony in 1979 and have two children, Siddhartha and Emily.

The swedish ceremony

Today, he is the only Indian with voting rights in the Nobel Prize committee. He is a celebrated artist whose paintings have been honored in UN greeting cards. To the Swedish government, he serves as art and cultural advisor and has a government commissioned documentary in his honor. Several biographies in Swedish has been written and translated to other European languages. He comes to his village in Orissa every year to share his message on art and love. He hasn’t stepped into the Jagannath Temple, the lord who inspires him, because his wife, being a foreigner, is forbidden into the premises.

In his own words: "My tribe worshipped the forces of nature - fire, air, water - but we did not personify them. My blues are the real sky, my greens are nature as she is. To my mother´s people the sun is the highest God, the God of creation and life. The faces? Faces fascinate me. In every face there are a million different faces, a million different expressions. I want to penetrate this mystery - why are there all these expressions? What is the true nature of man? Art can reveal it to us."

From the family album with their children