2026-08-24

Calle manchada de vino

"Pan, vino y soledad" de Alexander Ryazantsev

Alexander Ryazantsev. Pan, vino y soledad.

Platón Besedin

Alexander Ryazantsev. Pan, vino y soledad.

– M.: Montaña Azul, 2025.

El título es una parte crucial, fundamental de un libro, de cualquier obra. Es un cliché, sí, pero ¿qué haríamos sin él? Intenta eliminarlo. A veces, en realidad, lo único que queda es el título, y nada más. O surge de forma instantánea o nace con gran esfuerzo. Así que me gustaría preguntarle a Alexander Ryazantsev: "¿Cómo surgió el título de su primer libro?". Si pudiera, me lo quedaría.

«Pan, vino y soledad» es casi una obra de arte. Y tiene un aire muy literario. ¿Qué veo, oigo y siento al leer esas tres palabras y esa conjunción en la portada? Representa una linterna, un libro, una mesa, y también hay vino, pero no pan. Todo está dispuesto de tal manera que evoca las palabras de Nabokov: «Un escritor nace en la soledad». En estos tiempos, él también vive en la soledad. ¿Quién necesita su obra?

Sin embargo, el título del libro de Ryazantsev no evoca a Nabokov, sino a un residente de Estados Unidos completamente distinto. Casualmente, él también se mudó allí, pero nació en otro país. Me refiero a Charles Bukowski. A sus libros «Jamón en pan» y «De un cuaderno manchado de vino». Bukowski también tiene esta brillante frase: «Nada puede impedir que un hombre escriba. Solo él mismo». Y así sucesivamente. Búsquenlo y léanlo.

Ryazantsev no es Bukowski, desde luego. Tiene un estilo distinto, una vida diferente, unos estándares diferentes, pero me imagino que trabaja de forma muy parecida. No en el sentido de beber, emborracharse, emborracharse, no. He visto a Ryazantsev en persona: es un tipo inteligente y culto. Dicen que es un crítico literario muy bueno. Quizás, quizás. Pero creo que hay algo más importante. Al igual que Bukowski, Ryazantsev está fanáticamente enamorado de la literatura. La respira, está hecho de ella. No se la pueden quitar, extraer, arrebatársela. Porque entonces no quedaría Ryazantsev.

Me gustan estos «fanáticos desquiciados». Sobre todo ahora, en la era de la IA. Solo ellos contraatacarán cuando se condene la Palabra. Esos locos que consideran la literatura el fenómeno más importante del mundo. Sin bromas, sin dudas, sin ambigüedades. Igual que hace cien, igual que hace doscientos años. Aunque todo ha cambiado. El libro de Ryazantsev, «Pan, vino y soledad», respira esta certeza de que es lo más importante. Eso es lo importante. Y eso es lo que inspira respeto.

Bukowski parecía escribir sobre borrachos, pero en realidad escribía sobre los que daban vueltas en la cama, los abandonados, los reflexivos. Escribía sobre intelectuales, sobre aquellos que intentaban, si no cambiar el mundo, al menos establecer temporalmente un pacto de no agresión con él. Sin embargo, en el mundo de Bukowski, él era esencialmente la única figura literaria. Ryazantsev retrata a muchos más personajes relacionados con el mundo de la literatura. Esto sucede en el cuento que da título al libro, «Pan, vino y soledad», o en otro, algo menos logrado, «Al marcharse, apague la luz». Roman Senchin merodea por algún lugar cercano. ¿Recuerdan de qué obra estoy hablando? No habrá ninguna pista.

Este anhelo por la Palabra y por la Palabra es un intento persistente de superar la soledad. No siempre convincente, pero sin duda resuelto, a veces incluso valiente. En efecto, hay mucha soledad en la prosa de Alexander Ryazantsev. La portada no me engañó. Es más abundante en el cuento "Corona en llamas", y lo diré sin rodeos: esta pieza es una de las más poderosas de la colección. Respira lo que intentaron arrebatarnos. Ofrece un atisbo de los tiempos en que intentarán quitarnos la Palabra. ¿Quién se alzará entonces para defendernos? Los fanáticos. Están presentes en "Pan, vino y soledad".

Y una cosa más. Ryazantsev es increíblemente culto. Es un libro de referencia sobre literatura. Pero los libros de referencia son áridos, mientras que la prosa de Ryazantsev no lo es. Respira, te transporta a esa misma calle donde una vez soñaste con ser escritor. Y, de hecho, aún sueñas con ello, aunque hayan pasado tantos años. La calle nunca termina.

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Profesión/Especialidad: escritor

Nacido en Sebastopol. Autor de novelas como «Los hijos de diciembre», «El maestro», «El libro del pecado» y otras, así como de libros de no ficción como «¿Por qué los rusos no pueden soñar?» y «Diario de un ruso-ucraniano». Presenta su propio programa de televisión.

LOS ESTUDIANTES RUSOS DE SECUNDARIA TIENEN QUE LEER ARCHIPIEKAGO GULAG

Russian high-school students to read The Gulag Archipelago

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) was one of the greatest Russian civic activists and writers of the 20th century. He dared, almost alone, to challenge the repressive system of the vast Soviet empire – and won. The magnum opus of his long life, The Gulag Archipelago, was written under permanent threat of arrest, with the police ready to search his home or imprison him at any time. Solzhenitsyn had no access to archives, so he traveled across Russia talking to survivors from Soviet labour camps, hiding fragments of his manuscript and forcing himself to work at a ruthless and frenzied pace. As a result, in 1973 the world saw the most compelling testimony ever of crimes committed by the Soviet regime, presented as a vast panorama spanning half a century. The prison camp saga was nothing short of a public outcry against the system of terror that propped up Stalin's rule. The Soviet authorities condemned Solzhenitsyn, but failed to disprove the accusations. The international community learned the ugly truth.

An abridged version, revised by Solzhenitsyn himself, was published in the West almost immediately after the original edition, but in Russia, the entire three-volume set made its belated appearance only in 1990s and has been published unabridged ever since. Of course, this edition had the advantage of presenting, along with painstakingly documented history, a wide-ranging polyphony of the powerful fictional narrative. Yet the formidable tomes made it hard to introduce this outstanding work to a younger readership. That is why until recently The Gulag Archipelago had been optional reading in Russian schools. To make it more accessible, the writer's widow, Natalya Solzhenitsyna, compiled an abbreviated version of the novel, which has been included on the compulsory reading list for Russian 20th century literature in schools.

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Excerpts from the RG interview with Natalya Solzhenitsyna:

Why was the abridged Archipelago published much later in Russia than in the United States or United Kingdom?
Twenty five years ago, Alexander grudgingly agreed to abridge the Gulag Archipelago for American students. We were confident then, a bit haughtily perhaps, that Americans would hardly be able to digest the three volumes, but when the work was published in liberated Russia, there would be no question about cutting it to a graspable size. Twenty years passed and Gulag was published... But life became so wildly hectic leaving neither room nor time for reading ... It turned out that even in Russia, many adults have trouble reading a book to the end, let alone teenagers. Today’s hurried lifestyle simply gives them no chance.

What is the key question pupils will feel they have had answered after they read the last page of The Gulag Archipelago?

It is very hard to tell. Each person has his or her own key questions and answers. The Gulag Archipelago is not a didactic novel preaching morals. But I think all readers will realise one thing: it is disgusting that inhuman abuses and atrocities perpetrated in your own country become known and discussed only decades after the fact. This is unacceptable. People must respond immediately. It takes a lot of courage and honesty, but we must not close our eyes to wrongdoing. Because, as we can see from the Archipelago, evil is not everlasting, but it never walks away of its own accord.

The single-volume edition contains a unique snapshot of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in an old padded jacket with his labour camp number "Sch-282" standing at a security checkpoint. Where did this photo come from, who took it? Tell us the story behind the picture.

This photograph was taken in the first days of Solzhenitsyn’s exile, not in the labour camp. But the numbers are genuine; we still have them and keep them as very precious artifacts. These are his authentic prison tag numbers that Alexander smuggled out of the camp inside his padded jacket. Other inmates who were transported with him did the same. It took nearly a month to get them from the camp to the place of exile, although both places were in Kazakhstan. On arrival, they stitched their number tags back onto their prison jackets and took pictures of each other. The camera belonged to Nikolay Zubov. He and his wife, also exiled, became close friends with Alexander though he was much younger. The Zubovs were pictured with affection in the Archipelago and featured as the Kadmin family in his other novel The Cancer Ward.

LA PROFECIA DE SOLYENITSIN SOBRE EL SEPARATISMO UCRANIO INSPIRADO POR EL SIONISTMO NAZI SE HA CUMPLIDO

A prophecy of pain: Solzhenitsyn foretells the future for Ukraine

Source: The Telegraph

The writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn predicted the current situation in Ukraine almost half a century ago.

In The Gulag Archipelago, the Nobel laureate wrote: “With Ukraine, things will get extremely painful.”

Even during Soviet times, Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophetically did not rule out the idea that Ukraine may break away, although “a referendum may be required for each region”, given the Bolshevik way of lumping together lands that had never historically belonged to Ukraine.

The Gulag Archipelago, Part 5, Chapter 2

… It pains me to write this as Ukraine and Russia are merged in my blood, in my heart, and in my thoughts. But extensive experience of friendly contacts with Ukrainians in the camps has shown me how much of a painful grudge they hold. Our generation will not escape from paying for the mistakes of our fathers.

To stamp one’s foot and shout: “This is mine!” is the easiest option. It is far more difficult to say: “Those who want to live, live!” Surprising as it may be, the Marxist teaching prediction that nationalism is fading has not come true. On the contrary, in an age of nuclear research and cybernetics, it has for some reason flourished. And time is coming for us, whether we like it or not, to repay all the promissory notes of self-determination and independence; do it ourselves rather than wait to be burnt at the stake, drowned in a river or beheaded. We must prove whether we are a great nation not with the vastness of our territory or the number of peoples in our care but with the greatness of our deeds. And with the depth of ploughing what we shall have left after those lands that will not want to stay with us secede.

With Ukraine, things will get extremely painful. But one has to understand the degree of tension they feel. As it has been impossible for centuries to resolve it, it is now down to us to show good sense. We must hand over the decision-making to them: federalists or separatists, whichever of them wins. Not to give in would be mad and cruel. The more lenient, patient, coherent we now are, the more hope there will be to restore unity in future.

Let them live it, let them test it. They will soon understand that not all problems are resolved through separation. (Since in different regions of Ukraine there is a different proportion of those who consider themselves Ukrainians, those who consider themselves Russians and those who consider themselves neither, there will be many difficulties there. Maybe it will be necessary to have a referendum in each region and then ensure preferential and delicate treatment of those who would want to leave. Not the whole of Ukraine in its current formal Soviet borders is indeed Ukraine. Some regions on the left bank [of the River Dnieper] clearly lean more towards Russia. As for Crimea, Khrushchev’s decision to hand it over to Ukraine was totally arbitrary. And what about Carpathian (Red) Ruthenia? That will serve as a test, too: while demanding justice for themselves, how just will the Ukrainians be to Carpathian Russians?)

Written in 1968; published in 1974.

April 1981. Extract from a letter to the Toronto conference on Russian-Ukrainian relations, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
I totally agree that the Russian-Ukrainian problem is one of the major current issues and, certainly, of crucial importance to our peoples. Yet, it seems to me that the red-hot passion and the resultant sizzling temperatures are pernicious to that cause.

…I have repeatedly stated and am reiterating here and now that no one can be retained by force, none of the antagonists should resort to coercion towards the other side or towards its own side, the people on the whole or any small minority it embraces, for each minority contains, in turn, its own minority… In all cases local opinion must be identified and implemented. Therefore, all issues can be truly resolved only by the local population rather than in remote arguments in émigré circles, whose perceptions are distorted.

...I find this fierce intolerance in the discussion of the Russian-Ukrainian problem (fatal for both nations and beneficial only for their enemies) particularly painful because I myself am of mixed Russian-Ukrainian origin, grew up under the joint influence of both these cultures and never saw and do not see any antagonism between them. I have on numerous occasions written and spoken in public about Ukraine and its people, about the tragedy of the Ukrainian famine; I have many old friends in Ukraine; I have always known that Russians’ and Ukrainians’ suffering were of the same order of suffering caused by Communism. In my heart, there is no place for a Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and if, God forbid, things get to the extreme, I can say: never, under any circumstances, will either I or my sons join in a Russian-Ukrainian clash, no matter how some hotheads may be pushing us towards one.

Published in Russkaya Mysl, June 18, 1981. In Russia, published for the first time in Zvezda magazine, No 12, 1993.

Address to Ukrainians and Belarussians
To separate Ukraine today means to cut through millions of families and people: just consider how mixed the population is; there are whole regions [in Ukraine] with a predominantly Russian population; how many people there are who find it difficult to choose which of the two nationalities they belong to; how many people there are of mixed origin; how many mixed marriages there are (by the way, nobody has until now thought of them as mixed). In the thick of the general population, there is not a hint of any intolerance between Ukrainians and Russians.

Of course, should the Ukrainian people really decide to secede, nobody would dare to try and keep them by force. But, this vastness is diverse and it is only the local population that can decide the fate of their locality, of their region, while each newly formed ethnic minority on that locality should be treated with the same non-violence.

Written and published in 1990 in Rebuilding Russi

LABOR OMNIA VINCIT EL AMOR LO PUEDE TODO UN INDIO VIAJA DIEZ MIL KM EN BICI PARA REENECONTRARSE CON SU AMADA SUECA AL CABO DE DE SESENTA AÑOS. HISTORIA PUBLICADA EN DAILY TELEGRAPH

The man who cycled 6,000 miles across the world for love

When a low-caste Indian student and a Swedish noblewoman fell for one another, he crossed continents on a second-hand bicycle to reunite

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Pradyumna Kumar and Lotta Mahanandia von Schedvin at their home in Sweden — PK and Lotta with the bicycle on which he started his journey. The couple live in Sweden and have been married for almost 50 years Credit: Nora Lorek

Jessamy CalkinSenior Feature Writer and EditorShow biography

Published 24 August 2026 6:01am BST

Six years ago, in Gothenburg, Sweden, the documentary filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel had just given a speech at a Nobel Prize event when he was approached by two young people, who handed him a book. They were siblings, Karl and Emilie von Schedvin. “We love your work,” they said, “and this is our parents’ story. We wondered if you might be interested in exploring it for a film?”

“I was very polite,” says von Einsiedel, “and said I’d have a look. But sadly, my experience is that when people approach you out of the blue saying they have a story that would make a great film, it’s not usually the best story in the world. And when I got home, I put the book away and forgot about it.”

A few months later, the filmmaker – who had won an Oscar for his White Helmets documentary – was going on holiday and took the book with him to read on the plane. “Once I started reading it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, you’re an idiot – this story is unreal.’ And the minute we landed and I had phone reception, I got in touch with them.”

The problem was that by that time, the book – by Swedish author Per J Andersson – had been published in the United States, and the siblings had been inundated by people wanting to make a Hollywood version of the incredible story.

“They’d been courted by a lot of people, and promised the world on a stick, but I said, if you ever want to tell the story in a documentary form, we’d be very honoured.” The siblings invited von Einsiedel to meet their parents. “I fell head over heels in love with them, and we just kept the conversation going and eventually we all decided to work together. Karl and Emilie were producers on the film.”

And it is indeed an incredible story.

In late 1975, Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia, known as PK, was a 26-year-old art student living in Delhi. His grandfather was a tribal chief, and he had grown up in the village of Kandhapada in Odisha. He had a loving family, but he was a Dalit, the bottom of the pile in India’s complicated caste system, and had suffered traumatising discrimination as a child. As an “untouchable”, he was persecuted and had stones thrown at him, but he had been awarded a scholarship to do a master’s in fine art in Delhi and was making a living by drawing portraits of people by the fountain in the city centre. There had even been an article about him in a local newspaper.

A 1975 newspaper article about PK's talent as a portrait artist — A 1975 newspaper article about PK’s talent as a portrait artist

It had been ingrained in PK by his family that destiny was everything: an astrologer had told his father that PK’s future wife would come from a faraway land, that she would be musical, that she would be born under the sign of Taurus and “own a jungle”.

PK painted or sketched several people every day, but when a Swedish student showed up, he was immediately drawn to her. Her name was Lotta, she was 20, and she had driven to India with three friends in a VW van. When she came back a second time, he asked her when her birthday was; she was a Taurus, born in May. He asked her whether she was musical – she sang and played the piano. He asked her whether she owned a jungle; she was a bit bemused by this but told him that her grandfather, a Swedish nobleman, owned land and a forest near Gothenburg. In PK’s mind, it was decided. He told her she would be his wife.

Lotta had spent a year in London working as a nurse, and while there, she had been given a calendar with a photo of a vast stone wheel at the 13th-century Konark Sun Temple in Odisha. She loved this picture and pinned it on her wall. Without knowing about her obsession, PK took her to see it, and that is when she too believed in their destiny.

Lotta wrote to her parents to tell them that she had met her life partner, and she and PK travelled to his home village, where she was welcomed by his family and his father performed a marriage ceremony. But Lotta had to return to Sweden to study.

PK and Lotta c1975 — PK and Lotta fell in love in India, convinced that fate had brought them together

The couple wrote to each other. PK graduated from art college but was desperately missing Lotta. He inquired about a flight and was told that it would cost 40,000 rupees (about 18 times the average annual income in India at the time). Instead, in January 1977, he bought a secondhand ladies’ Raleigh bike for 60 rupees, packed up a sleeping bag, a rudimentary tent and his art materials, and set off for Sweden. He didn’t even have a map.

His remarkable journey is the subject of The Cycle of Love, von Einsiedel’s beautiful documentary. And almost 50 years later, I turn up in Boras, a town near Gothenburg, and make my way to the house in the middle of the forest – or jungle – where PK and Lotta now live.

It is remote: their nearest neighbour is about a mile away. Their house is wooden, surrounded by apple trees. Deer come into the garden, and foxes, and over the years they have seen lynx. Wild boars, Lotta tells me, “do the gardening for us and eat the weeds”.

The foundations of the house have been here since 1776, and it was rebuilt in 1936 by Lotta’s grandfather. The house is light and beautifully furnished, with a mix of antiques and Indian artefacts.

PK and Lotta are warm and welcoming. They speak Swedish to each other and English to me. As he tells me about his marathon journey, Lotta gazes at him fondly and attentively, even though she’s probably heard the story 100 times. PK looks younger than his 77 years, possibly down to his daily yoga. (Von Einsiedel tells me later that when he stayed in the house during filming: “I’d come down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and PK would be standing on his head.”)

PK and Lotta with their children, Karl and Emilie, outside their home, whose foundations date back to 1776 — PK and Lotta with their children, Karl and Emilie, outside their home, rebuilt by Lotta’s grandfather in foundations dating back to 1776 Credit: Nora Lorek

The film, released next month, is an artfully edited mixture of interviews with the protagonists and the story recreated by actors, Chirag Lobo and Mina Dale. It has been warmly received at film festivals, and PK and Lotta are delighted with it.

“People came up to us and told us that the film changed their life,” says Lotta. “It’s really touching people’s hearts.”

“It’s medicine for the people,” adds PK. “Medicine that’s needed.”

A significant theme of the story is the caste system, and how PK’s journey helped him come to terms with his childhood and to love himself. It was a crucial factor in why the couple wanted to make the film, says Lotta. “We met – East and West, he was untouchable, I was from nobility. He was ashamed of the caste system, I was ashamed to be part of the nobility – but we are a unifying force. This is a responsibility for us: every day we read what bad shape the world is in, and we see this as our message.”

When PK told Lotta he was going to cycle to her, she urged him not to go alone. But he did. And so the journey began. “My strength was my lack of geographical knowledge,” he says in the film. “I knew the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.” He also knew that the journey was long – almost 6,000 miles – but initially he thought he was going to Switzerland; he’d confused the two names. “A Belgian hippie had a map of Europe and I told him I was going to Boras, and he showed me that it was in fact in Sweden, not Switzerland. It was a bit of a blow to realise I had to go even farther than I thought.”

Still from The Cycle of Love — PK and Lotta as portrayed by Chirag Lobo and Mina Dale in The Cycle of Love

Then there was a visa problem. PK didn’t realise that, at the time, Indians couldn’t get visas to travel through Pakistan, and he was turned back. In Amritsar, near the border, he met an acquaintance from Delhi. Touched by his story, the man bought him an air ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan, so he could avoid Pakistan. PK had never flown before. The bike was brought to Kabul in a van by a German couple he had met.

And that defined the journey: meeting kind people. Those were the days when travel was relatively easy, with less conflict and bureaucracy. People invited him into their homes for food, or gave him money in exchange for a drawing. Everyone was moved by what he was doing.

Cycling away from Kabul, PK came across a car in a ditch and a young Western woman who had been pulled from the wreckage, lying by the side of the road. She was covered in blood and all her teeth had been knocked out. PK flagged down a lorry and lifted her into it, tossed his bike in the back and took her back to Kabul to hospital. She could not speak, but wrote her name on a piece of paper. Her name was Leanna, she was Austrian and worked in a gallery in Vienna. He stayed with her until she was discharged, then took her to her embassy – where they arranged a flight for her – and resumed his journey.

Weeks later, PK arrived at the poste restante in Istanbul to see whether there was a letter from Lotta. “And there was another envelope waiting for me,” he says. Leanna had sent him a train ticket to Vienna.

PK's journey across continents is retold in the documentary The Cycle of Love — PK’s journey across continents – as recreated here in Orlando von Einsiedel’s documentary – was shaped by the kindness of strangers

It had taken PK a long time to reach Istanbul, so by the time he arrived in Vienna, Leanna had left to go to India, but her sister took him to the gallery, “and the owner and his wife bought some of my paintings and gave me a train ticket from Vienna to Gothenburg”. He is still in touch with the family.

On the last leg of his journey, PK ran into further problems. At the German border, guards threatened to arrest him until he showed them his letters from Lotta and an article about him from an Indian magazine which said they were married, and they let him continue on his way.

As the train passed through Sweden, he shared a carriage with a Norwegian woman. “Meeting people was much easier then,” says PK. “Now if you’re sitting on a train everyone is looking at their phones, not talking to each other.” When she saw the guards approaching, she shoved a wad of notes into his pocket, “so when the Scandinavian police saw I had no return ticket and asked me how much money I had, I had something to show them”.

He arrived in Gothenburg on May 23, 133 days after he set off, and phoned Lotta.

“It was a very precious moment,” she remembers. “I drove to pick him up. For a long time there were hardly any words – he was just hugging me and crying.

Lotta Mahanandia von Schedvin — ‘It was a very precious moment,’ says Lotta of their reunion in Gothenburg Credit: Nora Lorek

“My parents gave him a nice welcome. They didn’t speak any English, so I taught them some phrases – my mum made a cake and I taught her how to say, ‘Welcome home’ and ‘Especially for you.’” PK had never seen anything like it. “He was used to eating with his fingers,” says Lotta, “and he took the cake thinking it was all for him and that he’d have to finish it by himself.”

PK recalls meeting Lotta’s father: “He opened the door and I fell at his feet. He was quite surprised. That’s how you greet people in India.”

They had an official Swedish wedding ceremony later that year. PK learnt Swedish and soon got a job teaching art; Lotta was teaching music. They have both taught yoga over the years.

PK and Lotta getting married in 1977 — PK and Lotta followed up their Indian marriage with an official Swedish wedding in 1977

Emilie and Karl join us in the dining room for Swedish fika – in this case, coffee and a delicious apple tart, eaten off beautiful china plates. Emilie was born in 1985 and Karl in 1988.

In those days, Sweden was very white. “People thought we must be adopted,” laughs Karl. “Because in Swedish kindergarten everyone is blond.” They had grown up knowing their parents’ story, and some of their classmates’ parents knew about it too – there had been articles and a documentary on Swedish television.

“People asked us about it, but it seemed normal to us when we were young,” says Emilie. “We thought everyone’s dad had done something like that.”

“Lots of kids had divorced parents,” says Karl. “People would come to see our parents for love advice!”

Emilie studied at the London College of Fashion and then worked in marketing; Karl was a well-known DJ and then became a helicopter pilot, a job he gave up to become a producer on the film. They also went with their parents to screenings of the film at festivals.

“Ethan Hawke wanted a picture with them,” says Emilie, “and Jodie Foster was in Telluride [Colorado] and she loved the film and recommended it to lots of people. She introduced herself to Mum, and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jodie, I’m an actor.’

“This was a big project that has taken such a long time,” she adds. “But it’s been really worth it. One woman tapped me on the shoulder after the screening and just said, ‘You guys gave me hope.’ And then she walked away.”

PK and Lotta by a lake — ‘People would come to see our parents for love advice,’ says Karl, PK and Lotta’s son Credit: Nora Lorek

The family travel to India often, to see the area where PK grew up, but it was a while before Emilie and Karl realised the impact of the caste system. “I studied it in school when I was about 14,” says Emilie, “and we talked about it a bit at home, but I didn’t know much about Dad’s experience until I was 19, and wanted to learn more about my roots. I chose to write about the caste system for a thesis. It was called “In My Father’s Footsteps”, and I went to Odisha and interviewed people from the Dalit communities. Then I interviewed Dad,” she pauses, in tears now, “and that was so emotional. Because it was the first time I saw my dad cry.

“Dad wanted us to experience India, but he wanted us to be Swedish because we live in Sweden and we are protected here,” Emilie says. “The values we were brought up with are something we want to share, because we are so privileged to have that foundation – of seeing people for who they are and not the labels that they carry.”

Back in London, I talk to the film’s director. There were a lot of challenges in making this film, von Einsiedel says, but early on he had an idea to test the basic concept in London. “I took a friend of mine, who is an actor, to Lewisham. He pretended to be an artist who was going to cycle from London to Cape Town for love, and he was trying to raise money for that. The first person he started speaking to was blown away, and she said: ‘I’ll buy you a flight – don’t cycle, I’m 100 per cent going to buy you a flight!’ We told her the truth, of course, but the power of the reaction was so strong that we immediately knew the concept would work.”

They had planned to shoot the journey as it really happened, but because of budget constraints and political challenges, that was not possible, so most of the film was shot in Sweden and India. “India has the entire world in one country: jungles, deserts, mountains,” von Einsiedel says. “There was no script, it was all improvised, and the actors had extraordinary chemistry.”

However, recreating PK’s drawings was a problem. They would set up scenes with real people, but explain that Chirag Lobo was an actor. “So Chirag would do a basic drawing and we had a very good street artist hiding round the corner to do the real one, and then Chirag would nip off and switch drawings. We wanted to get that genuine reaction when people are handed a drawing of themselves, because they are often very moved by it.

“PK really just survived that whole journey by doing those drawings and people inviting him into their homes. And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to make the film – I wanted to tell a happy story, a story of something positive. And the love in this story is extraordinary. It’s the idea that most people in the world are kind, and that’s what PK experienced, and it is my experience as a documentary maker. Most people are wonderful and kind, which is not the story you usually get when you turn on the news at night.”

The Cycle of Love is in British and Irish cinemas from Sep 18