‘Autumn Light’: Owing death a life

Is there anything more charming and tragic than picking up night jasmine flowers soaked in morning dew? Though this setting is closer to the Indian subcontinent, Pico Iyer’s memoir Autumn Light is a slowly observed tribute to the stillness of life in Japan. I say life and not death because the author’s own moorings and meditations remind us very early on that, “Dying is the art we have to master...not death”. Iyer’s former memoir, The Lady and Monk (1991) which told us of his romance with a Japanese woman recounted many tales about the Japanese way of reading seasonal variations. In Autumn Light too, there are long passages elaborating on the gradual change in nature and the valuable lessons of detachment it teaches us all.

But Autumn Light for the most part, is hard work—it really tests your intuitions about carrying on further with the dense, surreal pages. Beginning with Hiroko (his wife) dealing with her father’s death—the book moves back and forth, often not in unison. And most of the time, the author’s own awareness of mujo (Japanese for impermanence) even as he mitigates his conflicts feels very daunting. Probably this is Iyer’s own philosophical bent of mind which influences a lot of the writing. Infact, in one of the interviews with Patrick McMohan, Iyer had spoken of spiritual life by referring to writers like Emily Dickinson. “The beauty of such a writer’s approach is that she’s not shy about recording a journey into a great unanswerable “No.” Writers sometimes look inside and see nothing but a void.”

Further in the book, Iyer says, “As autumn seeps into my spirit—I’m beginning to lose track of what is it and what me (sic)—I feel as if I’m starting to disappear.” But Iyer is also conscious about the fact that sensing impermanence has all its different hues and is a continuous, vulnerable process. He refers to many literary works, including Buddhist/ Zen treatises and wants the reader to note how classical poems illustrate the Japanese art of “taking more and more away to charge the few things that remain.” There is great insight in-between these sentences and it reflects the author’s own penchant for translation. Plenty of popular Japanese ideas that have developed post World War II have been translated into tender prose. One must also keep in mind how atomic bombing can change the very climate and environment of a particular place—consequently changing the various metaphors with which people associate their major crises. The dwelling with these metaphors eases reading to some extent, but what it also does is enlarge the universe laid out in Iyer’s former book The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (2014).

At one point, on his way to Central Nara in Autumn Light, Iyer describes looking at the hands of passengers around him. While some are busy fiddling with their smart-phones, some hold tightly to their little ones whereas some cling to designer bags with their fists. It is a poignant and subtle way of observing the processes of holding on and letting go. He says, “The one part of Japan in which age cannot be concealed—hands tell the truth even when mouths and eyes cannot—is also the most beautiful”. Earlier in the book, he reveals his evolving bond with Hiroko, his present-absent brother-in-law and how disconnections don’t necessarily signify an end.

Hiroko sees an intensely moving characterisation in this book. Her homemade “ideogrammatic English” which she uses liberally (in which the only two operating tenses confuse the reader) defines her personality to a large extent. At the same time, both husband and wife exchange very little by way of words, but there is so much happening in the silences. (“It’s in the spaces where nothing is happening that one has to make a life.”)

This is an accurate rendering of the many human drifts and withdrawals when faced with the grave loss of a loved one. It is daunting and perhaps the most difficult phase of one’s life is, to be at such a spot. Iyer’s observation of Hiroko’s grief transforms him as well—in a delicate way. We never get to see the full picture but some glimpses in the end when he is reiterating the importance of seasonal arcs in Yasujiro Ozu movies. Or referring to the Fukushima nuclear plant workers, wondering, “How to learn to live with what you can never control?”

Is it by endurance, stillness or acceptance? The answer is also in the memoir itself for the reader to dig out. Nothing in Iyer’s book glorifies death or suggests that autumn is the season of death; it only tells us what Rushdie shared with us in Midnight’s Children long ago. “We all owe death a life”.

(The writer is a Guwahati-based author and researcher)