Book Review | A Travelogue of Life Amidst Silence
This is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. So beautiful in fact that it almost had me recoiling. Each word hanging like a pearl in the sky, limpid, luminous. It took a while for the distress of such immense radiance to wear off, and I am so glad it did. Not everyone, hopefully, is as absurd as me — with any luck — and so the charm will flow around you as it should.
An established writer, Iyer is an essayist and a novelist. However, he is best known for his travel writing. Learning from Silence is a travelogue of sorts, as much internal as external. For over two decades, Iyer has visited a Benedictine monastery in the Big Sur mountains of California. These retreats are open to people of all denominations, and they come and stay and go and wonder depending on their needs.
Iyer describes his trips over the years, in an intriguing mix of minutiae and broad strokes. His need for a retreat from the grind, his larger sense of purpose, his need to withdraw and to communicate are all detailed in brief and yet with weight.
The words and descriptions are breathtaking, minute changes in landscape around, the skies above, the stars and clouds, insects and life around. The beauty is breathtaking, soothing, disturbing, when you see it through the writer’s eyes. But beneath the beauty there is always danger. The forest fires which bring destruction and yet spur new growth. The human resilience which returns to the same places over and over, despite the danger and damages, as the monks do, as wanderers do, as the adventurers do is given Iyer’s own perspective and descriptive skills.
The spirit of resilience is countered with all those feelings of fear which plague us, the feelings which make us seek out the silence, search for something within ourselves which will lead to salvation. Loss is a common reason, as well as the confusion around impending loss. The uncertainty, of life, of reason itself, of survival, of happiness. Like the mountain lion which is not seen, but might be padding along behind you all the while you walk in the hills, the precariousness of existence dogs us all — seekers, readers, believers, knowers, runners, escapists, seekers.
Through Iyer’s journeys are the people he meets. Those in his everyday life, those at the monastery, those around the monastery. The monks themselves, his fellow pilgrims who return again and again, the people who live there, his family, his other friends. They might pepper him with wisdom or listen to his loneliness or bolster his own need for being there. There’s even the great poet-songwriter-singer of the 20th century, Leonard Cohen, for those who want a bit of celebrity in their spiritual searches.
The religious rituals which are non-invasive, and so can be calming, are a thread through the book. The balance provided by the issues of everyday living — plumbing, water, heating, electricity — is a sort of bulwark against fancies of the mind. Iyer takes us here too.
Learning from Silence is a marvel in that it takes so little space to say so much. The book is just about 200 pages long. But in that, it packs what can be the essence of human experience of life within, and with Nature around us.
Do not miss this!
Learning from Silence
By Pico Iyer
Penguin India
pp. 214; Rs 599