Jagat Ananda Pradyumma Kumar Mahanandia aka PK is a Swedish citizen of Indian origin. He cycled to Europe in mid-1970s to reach Sweden to meet his future wife. PK’s and his Swedish wife Charlotte von Schedvin’s love story is soon to hit the silver screens, or cinemas, across the world. PK spoke to www.gothenburg-400.com to share the developments on the script for the movie among other aspects.
THE AMAZING STORY OF THE MAN WHO CYCLED FROM INDIA TO EUROPE FOR LOVE is the unwieldy title of PK’s biography – a real-life love story of an upper-class (noble) Swedish girl and low-caste (dalit or harijan) Indian boy. PK’s life enlightens the reader what he has experienced as the child of a dalit family (made to sit outside the classroom) and how an artist can make a living out of his art when it is utilitarian (unlike aesthetics). The book puts India to shame for its caste system which continues to this day in one form or the other, and its practitioners to liberate from the shackles of caste and embrace love with fellow humans.
PK was born on the day Jesus Christ and Atal Behari Vajpayee were born: 25 December. In PK’s case it was 1949 – in a village near Athmallik in the eastern Indian state of Orissa (Odisha).
An astrologer in India prophesied PK’s life as told in his biography written by Per J Andersson: “He will work with colours when he grows up. He will marry a girl from a far, far away, from outside the village, the district, the province, the state and even the country.”
(photo: PK with admirers in Gotheburg (Göteborg)
(The story first appeared in gothenburg-400.com)