Book: LEARNING FROM SILENCE
Author: Pico Iyer
Published by: Hamish Hamilton
Price: Rs 599
Those who have read Pico Iyer’s travel writings would know that Iyer excels in bringing alive the external world while constantly effacing his own presence. Yet, this has been changing and an older, quieter, reflective Iyer has increasingly been travelling inwards even as he hurtles around the world. This contemplative interiority was evident in Autumn Light and A Beginner’s Guide to Japan. In Learning from Silence, the reader reaches deep within the recesses of Iyer’s mind and accompanies him in his search for a silence that is “active and thrumming”.
The narrative, if it can be called that, comprises brief ruminations collected over a period of 30 or so years from over 100 journeys that Iyer has made to the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Camaldolese Benedictine monastery in Big Sur. Perched on a cliff above the Pacific along a secluded stretch of the central California coastline, it is surrounded by “[o]nly the brightness of the blue above and below,” redwoods, oak and desert yuca. Every time the ‘flames’ —literal and metaphorical — are at the door, Iyer seeks out the sanctuary of the monastery. He had discovered its spartan beauty when his home, his works, and every other possession were razed to the ground by a wildfire in California over three decades ago. Since then, he has found himself travelling back to this place during other ordeals, such as the death of his father, when his mother suffered a stroke, when his daughter had cancer and so on.
Those unaware of Iyer’s history and earlier writings may find it difficult to settle into the flow of this book wherein the author flits between his many trips, experiences, and epiphanies. Characters — some of them would be familiar to those who have read Iyer before — flit in and out. Others appear only to serve as the trigger for a realisation and then disappear, as do eminent personalities like Emily Dickinson and Franz Kafka, Leonard Cohen and — unsurprisingly — the Dalai Lama. All this may sound breathless, but a few pages in, Iyer lulls the reader into the rhythm of a book that aims to go nowhere and instead returns, time and again, to the same place, described in similar words. The reader is forced to slow down, contemplate the words that Iyer chooses to repeat and, in so focussing on Iyer’s reflections, silence the cacophony inside his/her own head.
The reflections are sometimes poignant and, at other times, beautifully vivid. Even as he is on this inward journey, the curious raconteur in Iyer is ever-eager to collect stories and wisdom of others — monks, friends and fellow-seekers of silence. Fire becomes a central motif of the book and a parable about the precariousness of existence. While the monks struggle to keep the flame of passion alive within, natural wildfires threaten to engulf them and destroy everything. There is no safe haven, Iyer tells us; everything can turn to ash.
