The best way to travel, an essayist once wrote, is in your imagination. Pico Iyer is finally heeding that advice. His tramplings in the world resulted in some of his best non-fiction work but he is now surfing the larger landscape of the imagination. ‘‘I am travelling a little less but journeying more into the imagination,’’ says Iyer, in Delhi for the release of his novel Abandon.For years Iyer, an essay writer with Time, has delighted fellow-travellers, wannabe globetrotters and armchair backpackers with his tales of travel and incisive observations about what happens when the remote meets the familiar. Video Nights in Kathmandu was not about forbidden lands but about remakes of Rambo in India and Nike-sporting locals in Nepal amidst western nirvana-seeking tourists. ‘‘I think each culture is attracted by the other. The West is attracted to ancient cultures whereas in many of the countries that I have visited people look at America as a land of hope,’’ he says.And Iyer is not unduly perturbed about the export of American culture. ‘‘I went to the McDonald’s here in Delhi and had masala chai. The menu is so different from any other McDonald’s. Except the M sign it’s all different. Old cultures will take other influences but are too strong to really change.’’Iyer’s one-year stay in Kyoto was recorded in The Lady and the Monk. He begins by staying in a monastery to study Zen Buddhism which is also the beginning of his friendship with Sachiko, a housewife with two children, who is fascinated with the West.And Tropical Classical with its section on places, people, themes and squibs is a collection of essays from everywhere.But like any good traveller, Iyer has moved on. So, for Abandon, he has dived into the Islamic mind. By choosing a subject like Sufism, the shift from travel on firm land to a journey into the transcendental world seems complete.Iyer’s next offering is a book of travels in some of the poorest parts of the world. And in his novel-to-be he will write in a woman’s voice. ‘‘I speak in a woman’s voice and for that I have to go into the sub-conscious of a woman. There has been this progression from travel to Sufism to the mind of a woman,’’ he says.But it is Iyer’s real-life travels and non-fiction that easily score over his forays into fiction.He may be doing less of that himself, but he emphasises the need of travel after September 11 — now more than ever. Admitting that though greater access to travel has resulted only in superficial understanding, he says: ‘‘It’s better superficial understanding or even misunderstanding than none at all.’’Iyer, the author of The Global Soul, once described himself as a global village on two legs. Born to Indian parents, educated in England, he lives mostly in California and Japan. Appropriately enough then the airport in his The Global Soul becomes the condensed reflection of a world where cultures meet and mix and where hopping on to a plane seemed a natural way of living. The Global Soul held the heady promise of an age of adventure, greater access and cross-cultural connections. It also contained the poignancy of rootless souls hurtling along in an ambiguous world. And these are precisely the heady qualities that the romance of travel offers.Iyer’s moving away from travel and globalisation to fiction is almost like the end of innocence that’s associated with both. Globalisation no longer stands for the united colours of countries. Today for many it spells economic, social and political bullying at best and repression at worst. Reason enough for even Iyer to feel uncomfortable in California. Iyer had once described America as the ideal home for the ‘‘privileged homeless.’’ America’s posturing in recent months has made him change his mind. ‘‘I am beginning to think whether I still want to live in the US and be part of these bullying policies.’’It is in his other home in Japan that Iyer finds peace. Ironically, a floating soul like his finds comfort in Nara, a town steeped in community and continuity. ‘‘There is a person and place for everyone with whom you feel at home at once,’’ says Iyer. And for him it was Japan. He does not eat much Japanese food and speaks only a smattering of Japanese but feels an almost-spiritual connectedness with the country. ‘‘I am perhaps the only Indian there and no matter how long I stay here I will be considered a foreigner.’’But being a foreigner is a feeling precious to Iyer. ‘‘While travelling I was not getting that feeling of foreign-ness which gives energy to my writing. So I am taking a rest now,’’ says Iyer.But his readers hope another Pico Iyer book of travels will emerge after the break.
