BLF 2022 - ‘Despite advances in technology, you still can’t taste sushi online'

In an age of information overload, it’s telling how little we know of the countries most in the headlines, says travel writer Pico Iyer at the BLF 2022

Noted travel writer Pico Iyer recalled Bengaluru as a ‘sleepy town’ with bicycles and quiet parks when he visited the city 48 years ago as a 17-year-old. “The city has changed as much as I have from when I was 17 years old and now 65,” he told the audience at the 11th edition of Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) in Bengaluru on December 3. 

Speaking on why we need to travel, he said globalisation may have created an illusion that the world has shrunk, but it hasn’t. “In Vancouver (Canada), I was once in a virtual reality booth that showed me the Amazon forest (in Brazil). Coming out, I became more aware of what experiences I could never get virtually. Though we can see and listen to many Rolling Stones concerts on our mobiles, nothing matches being in a live concert. Even now, you cannot taste sushi online,” he said, adding it’s still so hard to fall in love with something second-hand. 

Video | Whatz up at Bangalore Literature Festival 2022

Recounting his travel to North Korea and Iran, he said, in an age of information overload, it was telling how little we know about the countries that have been most in the headlines. He recounted a sense of deja vu in cities of the two countries.

“I started from Las Vegas, travelled across the West for three days and reached Pyongyang (capital of North Korea) to get the strange feeling that I am back in Vegas. The skyline of the cities in Iran was similar to Dubai,” he said. He recounted meeting a taxi driver in Iran, who had been educated in London (the U.K.), fled Iran, sought asylum in the U.K., but sneaks back every year to meet his family, and pay his respects to a Sufi saint.

“I had once set aside four years of my life to read everything on Iran to set a novel in a country that I had not visited. I had written about Iran, but four hours in the country gave me new insights into the country and culture. Never have we heard of people who have fled Iran sneak back to visit the home they fled, but miss so much. I realised Iran is about these contradictions. I saw pirated copies of biographies of Steve Jobs selling fast in Iran, but that hasn’t made them any less hostile to the U.K. or the U.S.A.,” he said.

“Today, we are 200 cultures divided by a common frame of reference. Travelling is not for the sights, but to get a new set of eyes and it’s not about to move, but about being moved. A photographer working on the refugee crisis once said that when you see statistics, you see despair, and when you see faces, you see hope. We need to travel to make statistics into faces and instill hope in us,” he said.