By Sukant Deepak New Delhi, April 26 : Home for him is a collage made up of all the people and places that have made him. He has always felt that it was something inward and portable-what lives in you rather than where you live-but when his house burned to the ground in a wildfire, and he lost all my possessions and plans in a single evening, it became a truth author Piyo Iyer had to live by. "I don't think it's important to search for it, but it is helpful to be flexible and open in how you define home and not to assume that it belongs only to the street where you grew up or your address right now. If you are lucky, home will find you rather than the other way around. Which is why it is often said that we all have two homes, at least: One the palace where we were born and the other the place where we truly become ourselves," he tells IANS. In Iyer's latest book 'The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise' (Penguin) which recently hit the stands, he travels, both internally and externally to diverse places -- Iran, North Korea, Srinagar, Jerusalem, and tries to decipher why the seeming paradises turn into war zones, and if paradise can be found here or now, or does it exist only in the afterworld. Talk to him about the 'guiding thought' behind the book and if it had to with the fact that we know little but merely claim to be certain about things -- maybe as a defense mechanism... and he asserts that it was in part about the illusion of control, the way we barricade ourselves behind the illusion of knowingness and thinking we are on top of things-partly, perhaps, because (as the pandemic reminded us every hour) we are not. "More and more I feel that all the important things in life-falling in love, being moved to tears by a quiet place, being grounded overnight by a global pandemic-lie far beyond our reckoning. I also wanted to suggest through my title that in the 'Age of Information', we sometimes know less about the world than ever before, and least of all about the countries we hear most about (Iran, North Korea, Cuba). I am not convinced, in other words, that the world's notions about India are any more accurate than they ever were!" But it is possible that 'Paradise' also be a scary idea/place too, right? This British-born essayist and novelist known chiefly for his travel writing, who has authored a number of books on crossing cultures including 'Video Night in Kathmandu', 'The Lady and the Monk' and 'The Global Soul' feel our ideas of paradise can get in the way of finding it, right here, right now. "And that it's the curse of many places, from Kashmir to Sri Lanka, to be seen as paradise, because it means that everyone in the world wants a piece of them or has designs on them. And of course, your sense of paradise can never be mine. So I think paradise can be a very dangerous idea if it takes us away from the only place where we can truly live: reality." Even as Iyer observes several sacred places in his latest, he notes that in all of them --- Varanasi, Jerusalem, Srinagar, and Mashhad, among others -- there is such a powerful magnetism that even an outsider feels stirred and moved. Adding that one senses, almost palpably, the longing for something higher and better, and yet the names and ideas we place around that longing divide us so brutally, he says, "I, for example, am not Christian, Muslim or Jew, yet I am shaken by Jerusalem, uplifted by it to the point of tears. At the same time, that great city of faith has always been a city of conflict, not just between the three great monotheisms, but even within them. It is as if the boxes into which we place our intimations of something truer instantly make divisions between 'us' and 'them'. Religion so often does a disservice to the genuine religious spirit within almost every one of us." The writer does not mind being a perpetual 'outsider'- born to Indian parents in very monocultural 1950s England, and then moving to California as a boy, he says has no choice about being an outsider more or less wherever he finds himself. "Even in India or England or California. Of course, the local sees and knows things that no outsider can ever catch. But sometimes it can work in the other direction, too; when my Japanese wife comes to my hometown of Oxford, she brings fresh and appreciative eyes to it that discern all kinds of wonders and details that I have always sleepwalked past. Perhaps that's why many of us aim to be inside and outside a place or world at the same time, especially if we are writing about it. A citizen of Mumbai has to see her city as it looks to an outsider even as she draws upon the special wisdom of knowing it from within." While the central chapter in the book is set in Jerusalem, where religious dogma has cut up the world so violently for so long, right after he starts to include the Dalai Lama. The author, who has accompanied the Dalai Lama on ten trips to Japan says the thing that so stirs about the religious leader that he delivers long lectures on the Gospels to groups of Christians, and tears come to his eyes when he describes the parables of Jesus; he calls himself a "defender of Islam" and seeks out counsel from rabbis. And he takes celebrated delight in talking to scientists, who are discovering the immutable laws, not at all religious and certainly non-denominational, that define all our lives. "He knows, in other words, that it's important to be kind, responsible, and selfless, but he sees that the doctrines we build up around that can so often turn into divisive dogma. Humans are not always worthy of the religions they construct." Mention the recent controversy surrounding him, and Iyer says, "Having travelled with His Holiness across Japan so many times, by his side every minute of his working day for eight hours each day, and sitting in on all his private audiences, I know how he likes to make human contact with every last soul he meets and treat every stranger as a friend. If people choose to misinterpret that, I suspect it usually has more to do with them than with him." The book emerged when he was living with his mother during the Pandemic. He recalls, "She was going through the final seasons of her life. Living so close to death moved me to think with new urgency about how I wanted to live. I was also staying in one place for months on end, as is seldom possible given my job, and thus able to look back calmly on 48 years of constant travel. Most of all, I was wondering how hope and light can be found in the midst of life and in the face of death. Life, I suspect, will always be difficult, and death is always inevitable. But none of that precludes hope, delight, even joy, and that is what I was looking for." Iyer, who writes by hand for five hours every day without a computer in the same room and goes online to check e-mails only after those hours are complete, says two daily walks around my neighbourhood are an important part of his writing practice. Reading fiction or serious reportage for an hour a day and then going to the health club, he adds, "A writer has to be an athlete of sorts, careful about what he or she eats, how he or she sleeps, what he or she puts into the system, in the way of words and ideas as well as nutrients. So for all these years in Japan, I have lived in a tiny apartment with no car, no bicycle, no cell phone, and little to distract me from my task. Were I to stop writing, I often remind myself, my loved ones might have no way to eat," he says. The writer, who will be attending the upcoming JLF Soneva Fushi (May 12-21) feels literature festivals are an incalculable treasure, and people living in South Asia may not appreciate how very lucky they are in this constant celebration of literature (and books and ideas). "The JLF is of course the grand-daddy of them all, and as rich and exciting and fun a festival as any across the planet. Jaipur was what opened the door for me for coming to Festivals in India, in 2009, and ever since I have been back to Jaipur twice and travelled with the JLF to Belfast and London, Toronto, and now the Maldives. I feel very lucky." Putting the final touches on his next book, which in many ways is designed to be a companion piece to 'The Half Known Life', he says it will be about finding paradise-and sustaining and spreading it-by living in a small, largely empty room in the wilderness. "It is about the Benedictine monks in California with whom I have been spending much of the past 32 years. As the world accelerates and it is ever easier to get caught up in the moment, I'm keen to look to the long-term and think about what really matters and what, in the end, we love most," he concludes. /IANS