Priyanka Chopra Jonas knows a good love story when she sees one.
Her own was a bit of a whirlwind, Nick Jonas proposing just a few months after they started dating in 2018. They were married by the end of the year, their wedding festivities unfolding over the course of three days in her native India.
So, when Chopra learned about Pradyumna Kumar “PK” Mahanandia and Lotta Von Schedvin—who fell head over heels for each other while Lotta, a Swedish student, was visiting Delhi in 1975 and are still together to this day—the actress was inspired to help shepherd their story to the big screen as executive producer of The Cycle of Love.
“Everything about it is so heartwarming,” she told E! News Aug. 20 at the documentary’s New York premiere, “and just makes me feel like, in a crazy world right now, it’s a ray of sunlight.”
Of course, boy didn’t just meet girl, the end.
Rather, the cycle in question not only refers to PK’s journey of “learning to love himself so he can love others,” as director Orlando Von Einsiedel explained, but also to the 6,000 miles he traversed by bicycle to join Lotta in Sweden.
Or, as Chopra put it, he made “this insane gesture of love that sounds almost unbelievable, but isn’t.”
So, for cinema’s sake, it’s a good thing PK didn’t heed Lotta’s urging not to embark on his ride alone. Because though he probably would have reached his destination regardless, he wouldn’t have had nearly as many life-changing experiences along the way.
“My strength was my lack of geographical knowledge,” the now-77-year-old quipped in the film, recounting how he found out from “a Belgian hippie” with a map (a seemingly essential item PK did not have) that Borås, where Lotta lived, was in Sweden, not Switzerland.
“It was a bit of a blow,” PK admitted, “to realize I had to go even farther than I thought.”
But The Cycle of Love is, of course, about more than a colorful road trip.
PK was getting his master’s degree in fine art in Delhi and had acquired some local renown as a street portraitist when he met Lotta. She had driven into town with some friends and approached PK, who plied his trade by the city center fountain, to draw her portrait.
When she came back the next day, too, he told her she’d be his wife. Lotta agreed, and wrote home to tell her parents she’d met the one.
The couple traveled to his family’s village of Kandhapada, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, and PK’s father officiated a marriage ceremony. Yet when it came time for Lotta to return to school in Sweden, PK was still finishing his degree and remained in Delhi.
After he graduated, he planned to reunite with Lotta but couldn’t afford a plane ticket. Instead, he bought a used ladies’ bicycle, packed a sleeping bag, a tent and his art supplies, and hit the road.
Suffice it to say, PK growing up a member of the Dalit—meaning, according to India’s ancient caste system, he was considered the lowest social class, an “untouchable”—didn’t deter Lotta in the slightest.
But being bullied and discriminated against had left PK with scars, and his cycling journey (which, incidentally, also included his first airplane flight after he couldn’t get a visa to ride through Pakistan) ended up being a balm for the soul.
The Cycle of Love brings Per J. Andersson‘s 2017 book The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled From India to Europe for Love to life, showing PK—played as a young man by Chirag Lobo—relying on the kindness of strangers, coming to the aid of others and connecting with people through his drawings.
About four months after he set out from Delhi, PK rode into Borås—and that’s where the couple stayed to raise their children, Karl Mahanandian Von Schedvin and Emilie Von Schedvin, who are also producers on The Cycle of Love.
The family traveled frequently to India so the kids could get to know their father’s homeland, but PK wanted them to grow up as Swedes.
“The values we were brought up with are something we want to share,” Emilie, who wrote about the caste system for a university thesis, explained to The Telegraph ahead of the documentary’s premiere, “because we are so privileged to have that foundation—of seeing people for who they are and not the labels that they carry.”
Though, at the same time, Karl said with a laugh, “People thought we must be adopted, because in Swedish kindergarten everyone is blond.”
Yet in their parents’ case, love truly did conquer all.
“We met—East and West, he was untouchable, I was from nobility,” Lotta, whose grandfather was a prominent landowner, told The Telegraph. “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.”
And, not least, PK and Lotta are “so cute together,” as Chopra told the BBC at the film’s premiere. “They hold hands, they’re affectionate. I want that after 50 years, it’s amazing.”
The Cycle of Love is playing at New York’s Angelika Film Center and opens in Los Angeles and more locations starting Sept. 4.
https://www.eonline.com/news/1435490/priyanka-chopras-cycle-of-love-unbelievable-true-story-revealed