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A world wanderer, a wanderlust
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Was it wanderlust that drew Pico Iyer to Delhi the other day? Was it just a convenient stopover on the way from Dharamshala to Tokyo? Was he here merely for the launch of his rare foray into fiction, "Abandon: A Romance"? <145,4>ZIYA US SALAM speaks to the man who calls himself an internationalist and lives life like one...
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Photo: R.V. Moorthy.
Pico Iyer... little of India in this internationalist's writing.
SIDDHARTH PICO Iyer. The name of this world wanderer may not roll off your tongue in sleep unless you happen to be an inveterate desk traveller. It is, however, a name and a face that has been staring at you from newspaper and magazine columns over the past fortnight or so - yes, he is the one with wayward locks, clean visage, ready smiles. But if you are into fiction reading this summer, it is a name and a face that promises to be your constant companion. As you travel from India to Iraq, from California to Tokyo, his words may not leave you frozen in Saharan heat or absolutely enthused in the enervating Delhi summer but they tell you that there is time and season for everything. And this summer quite clearly belongs to the author of "Abandon: A Romance" brought out by Penguin India.
It might be a rare foray into fiction for the travel writer who did not put a foot wrong penning together five books of essays and travel over the past couple of decades, but the fact of the matter is, it does not show. It may not be on top of the best sellers' list yet but it is a book you would love to read at leisure. After all, it is a product of "a fresh heart and admiring eyes" with the India-born author, who was raised in England and settled in America and Japan, showing that he is as much at ease with Rumi's philosophical rumination as penning together travelogues. It is a book as universal as the author who once called himself "a global village on two legs" and claims now to "work in a world that's increasingly small". Sitting at New Delhi's The Imperial Hotel, he explains the hows and the whys of it all: "This work of fiction came about because I am a travel writer. Fiction is much more difficult, it is a walk into an unknown territory. I am always trying to travel and staying still. I have had so much of travel across continents that now I am trying to travel at my desk for some time."
Incidentally, "Abandon" is a tale of John Macmillan, an Englishman in California, studying Sufism and interested in Rumi, the 13th Century mystic. Travelling to Damascus, he hears of rumours of a heretical manuscript that might have escaped from Iran. The poems take the readers though Spain, India and Iran, all the time telling us the different outlook of Islam and the West.
What did he have to do put together this tale? "I wanted to educate myself a bit about the Islamic world. In the West, people don't know how much Islam has influenced their life - in Paris, in Venice, there is great ignorance about the contribution of Islam. There is no realisation about Islam in the West."
Yet for this book, he did not station himself in West Asia and opted for the philosophical refrain and poetry of Rumi to get an insight into Islam. "I imagined about Iran. If I had gone there I would have been be distracted by the day-to-day details."
Why Rumi? "He is an Islamic mystic, the voice of Islam in California. His poems about Divine read like love poems. California lacks in history. Rumi is the most approachable form of Islam for me, more like our own life. The orthodox schools of Islam would have been beyond my understanding."
The book was put together before the September 11 New York Twin Tower tragedy. "It is a timely book but I had written it before September 11. In this book I am trying to say that a debate about Islam and West is necessary. The book talks of clash of civilisations."
Though he is a prolific writer, he writes very little about India which is a shade surprising when one considers that he was born to a Tamil father and a Gujarati mother. "I know very little about India. I don't know enough about the country to write about it. I need to explore more. I would like to learn more. But it has been almost a deliberate decision not to write about India so far because neither do I know enough about it nor nothing at all to begin afresh. I left the country when I was two. At home we never spoke in Tamil or Gujarati. English was always the common language. I have been to Chennai only once though my work has taken more often to Delhi and Mumbai. I keep getting invitation from Indian newspapers to write but I have not been able to do much of it," says the man who wrote for "Time" for about five years and whose articles appear often in "Harper's", "New York Review of Books" and "New York Times".
Little wonder he calls himself an international writer, not an Indian. "I am an international citizen. I am not an Indian writer. I don't know enough about the country to be called that." As much at ease with the foreign and the familiar, he is as much at ease with his laptop as taking planes or picking his phone. Truly a multinational soul, who just happened to be in New Delhi for a couple of days, in Dharamshala for a month, in Tokyo for some more. "People speak enough English in Japan to get by, I know a bit of Japanese and I have lived there off and on for 15 years."
What after "Abandon"? "I am trying to imagine life as a woman. I am also putting together a work based on travel to the poorest countries. It includes Ethiopia, Yemen, Tibet, Cambodia and Bolivia. It should be out by April next year."
Yet he insists that he is not a travel writer. The description, he says may just be a convenient one. "I don't think of myself as a travel writer, not in the sense of covering the Himalayas or the Sahara. It is not an accurate description but a useful one." Who is to disagree with that? After all, if life is a journey, his words promise to make the travel enjoyable.
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