ON Jan. 22, 1977, 24-year-old P.K. Mahanandia set out on a four-month bicycle ride from Delhi, India, to Boras, Sweden, to be with the woman he knew was his soulmate. Their amazing love story became the subject of a best-selling book by Swedish author Per J. Andersson.

    Mahanandia met Charlotte Von Schedvin in 1975, completely by chance. He was working as a sketch artist in Connaught Place, a shopping and business hub in Delhi, and Von Schedvin, from Sweden, was visiting India as a tourist. One day, as she was walking around the city, she noticed a curly young man with a sign that read “a portrait in 10 minutes for 10 rupees” and decided to test the claim. She sat down for a portrait, but something made the man nervous, as his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Disappointed with the result of his drawing but intrigued by the man, she decided to return the next day for a new one, but the result was no better.

    The moment he had laid eyes on her, the artist remembered a prophecy his mother had made when he was only a boy. Mahanandia was a Dalit, the lowest caste in Indian society, and faced discrimination from upper-caste students growing up, so whenever he was sad, his mother would tell him that he would someday marry a woman “whose zodiac sign would be Taurus, she would come from a far away land, she would be musical and would own a jungle.” As soon as he saw her, he knew she was the one.

    “I didn’t even ask for her name first. I asked her if she was born in May, was a Taurus and owned a jungle. She kept saying yes to all the questions,” Mahanandia recalls. “I knew we were destined to meet. I told her she was going to be my wife, and then I got frightened that she would go to the police station which was nearby.”

    The two kept meeting, and less than three weeks later, Mahanandia took Charlotte to his home state of Orissa — now known as Odisha — where they got married according to tribal tradition. Soon after that, it was time for the Swede to return home with her friends, but she made her new husband that he would join her in the Swedish textile town of Boras. She even tried to leave him money for a plane ticket, but the proud young man refused to take it.

    They kept in touch by letter for a year, but Mahanandia’s financial status didn’t get any better, so he couldn’t afford a plane ride to Sweden. But he wasn’t going to give up on the love of his life either, so he sold all of his belongings, bought a bike for 60 rupees (US$0.9), and decided to cycle to the northern European country on the popular “hippie trail” that many Europeans cross on motorcycle to India. If they could journey on a motorcycle, maybe he could do it on a bicycle.

    He left Delhi on Jan. 22, 1977, passing through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey to reach Europe.

    On May 28, he finally reached Europe, and from Venice, he took a train to Gothenburg, Sweden, about 70 km from Boras, where Charlotte was waiting for him.

    (SD-Agencies)