The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai LamaPico IyerViking, Rs 499Pico Iyer offers a biographical meditation on the Dalai Lama, in a style that is as dispassionate as the monk himselfOur knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of non-knowledge.— Isaac Bashevis SingerThe dalai lama shot back into the limelight with the recent Chinese crackdown on Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa and neighbouring regions, which led to protests marring the relay of the Olympic torch for the Beijing Games. While the Chinese portrayed the Dalai Lama as almost a terrorist, the Tibetan leader’s legendary cool also showed signs of fraying. The whole episode brought into sharp relief the question of both Tibet’s future and the relevance of the Dalai Lama and his strategy. This makes Pico Iyer’s new book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, important, though it was completed before the Lhasa outbreak. Iyer is a name to be reckoned with in travel writing, given his gift for recreating a place and atmosphere in magical prose. In this, his first non-travel book (though he’s not been able to entirely shake off his travel log even in the headline — “open road”, “global journey”), he considers the life and work of a man he has known for over 30 years, a friend of his father, the legendary scholar Raghavan Iyer, elucidator of Gandhi and translator of the Gita and Dhampada. What makes Open Road the single most important book on the Dalai Lama to be published is that Iyer eschews conventional biography and instead offers a biographical meditation. And Iyer reveals that rare quality of a biographer, the ability to be dispassionate and see both sides of a situation — a little like the Dalai Lama himself. Fate and the Chinese, Iyer reminds us, have made the Dalai Lama something of a multi-tasker. He is the temporal head of a Tibetan government-in-exile, the spiritual head of Tibetans, an interpreter of Buddhism, a pilgrim exploring spirituality and science, and the global ambassador and face of the Tibetan nation. It will be a burden for anyone, but seemingly not for this “simple monk”, as he styles himself. The Dalai Lama is a remarkable personality, and it is always stunning to see how broadminded he can be. But when it comes to finding a solution to the pain of Tibet, it is a fact that although he has been successful in highlighting it and gaining international support for his people, it has never been at a level where it could actually influence events. Innumerable are the encomiums he has received, but encomiums do not bring autonomy. The Dalai Lama’s diplomatic efforts, negotiating with China over the future of Tibet, have always reached a dead end. As Iyer notes, “The Dalai Lama has been practising nonviolence and moving the world with his example for almost half a century, but he had not moved China at all, and Tibet was now almost gone.” The result is a disenchantment within the Tibetan community, increasing criticism of the Dalai Lama, and a slow move towards violence. One comes away from Iyer’s book both with a smile and a sense of foreboding. The smile, reading about the Dalai Lama, his activities, his message, his incredible link with his people. And the sense of foreboding because, how will this simple monk, grimly holding on to his non-violent tenets, force back the tidal wave of violence which may possibly engulf Tibet and China?
