The inner voyage of ‘travel writer’ Pico Iyer

He wants to sit by the window where the Arabian Sea’s waves can be seen and heard. The faint sounds keep punctuating our conversation. But he is not distracted. He talks slowly and deliberately, almost like a monk, making the space between us calmer, much quieter.

You want to start in no particular order — maybe talk about his travels to faraway lands, his reflections on the many spiritual systems in the world, or his over 100 retreats over three decades to the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur, California.

But it might make sense to ask about his latest book, ‘Learning from Silence’ (Penguin Random House) , where his radiant minimal prose strikes like a thunderbolt. A result of notes taken over three decades at the Benedictine monastery retreat, the author — who is not a Christian and does not follow a particular religion — finds his life transformed by the silence, reminding him of deeper truths he had lost along the way. Even as life keeps happening to him — his house burns down, a parent dies, and a daughter is diagnosed with cancer.

For the book, he had made 3,000 pages of notes, distilling them into something almost like a haiku, insisting that of all the books he has written, this one is the closest to his heart.

With his first three books on travel — the last one published in 1993 — Iyer says there was a peculiar urge to write this latest one, considering that in this age of speed, we are crying out for slowness, spaciousness and attention. “And stillness becomes the luxury we desperately need, but it keeps eluding us,” he says, in a conversation during the recently concluded Kerala Literature Festival, held on the Kozhikode beach. In fact, he wrote a small book, ‘The Art of Stillness’, 11 years ago as an appetiser to this. Not to mention, a book about the Dalai Lama in between — ‘The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’.

He says it is interesting that people still refer to him as a ‘travel writer’ despite the fact that he embarked on inner voyages long ago. “But I guess that was also a natural extension. You can say it is more about transformation than travel now.”

After all, inside a monastery, the first thing that hits you is silence, which is not just the absence of noise, but a palpable presence. “It is almost something that has been constructed like transparent walls over so many years of meditation or prayer. These are Catholic monks, but I think you find it in any monastery or convent, in any order. There is a very precise kind of silence that you step into — one that is alive and quickening,” Iyer adds.

But what does that silence do to a writer like him? There is a pause. He says, almost to himself: “I think it changes me, the blinders come off… I feel I am released from myself, suddenly wide open to the world around. There is a sense of freedom from my own thoughts; and anxieties just disappear into the larger scene. Most of us are looking for that release in some form. But the world is encouraging us to speed up so much that we are unable even to see the hurry we are in. Do we know how to break this cycle of acceleration? I think you know the answer.”

And how does he then ‘come down’ to the world? It must be tough. He smiles that it feels like a descent from heaven into the world where we have to live. “Of course, I am not a monk, and this is the world where I have to live. So when I make retreats, it is only a way to try to prepare me to be a little clearer and calmer in the world that I inhabit,” says the author, who does not use a mobile phone.

Coming to his travel writing, one is forced to wonder how he enters the heart of a city to touch its soul — be it ‘Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-so-Far East’, ‘The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto’, or ‘Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World’.

Arriving at a place, Iyer likes to walk around alone for the first 48 hours, almost like a ritual. Regarding the place as a fascinating stranger, he wants to know everything about her — her history, her passions, her secrets.

He still remembers, “When I met Iran for the first time, I was desperate to know everything about her. So I was on my feet for days, allowing her to introduce herself to me. The key is to take in the sights and sounds and smells undistractedly. And yes, Iran — it is the most refined place I have ever been. In many ways, the most varied and beautiful, the subtlest and endlessly fascinating. You can feel the 5,000 years of history there. My heart goes out to their people who have suffered for so many years. But they know how to maintain their dignity and their lives in the face of very difficult circumstances.”

Iyer, who lives in Japan nine months a year, feels it is the kindest place he knows. Not to mention, the most thoughtful, in the sense of selflessness. “People are always thinking about others before themselves. So, in a way, it is my attempt to make what I experience in the monastery part of my daily life. Japan is the closest I can get to living in both a silent and a compassionate monastery.”

As the conversation veers towards Indian cities, Iyer is quick to assert that it is Varanasi that possesses him. Talking about its magnetism and power, he smiles that he can never unravel the enigma that is Varanasi. “It is a summation of so much that is India in this very dense, powerful form. If I want to try to understand India, this city is where I would begin. Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore or Calcutta — they all have their own characters. But Varanasi, I am convinced, is the heart and soul of India.”

Currently, he is completing a book on his late mother’s life, as reflected through four plays by Shakespeare — ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, ‘King Lear’, and ‘The Winter’s Tale’. The last one being his favourite, Iyer adds, “But ‘King Lear’, I think, is a remarkable vision of ageing. In some ways, this work is my selfish wish to spend a lot of time with two great friends who have inspired me — my mother and Shakespeare,” he concludes.

— The writer is a freelancer