Secrets agent

Ikigai author Francesc Miralles on finding purpose, his Indian sojourn and the west's fascination with the east

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

Which country was writer Francesc Miralles most fascinated by as a teenager?

A no-brainer, one would say, if one were to go purely by the success of his 2016 book-Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life-that he coauthored with Héctor García. But it was India, and not Japan, that called to him first. "India influenced me when I was 14 or 15, first through western writers like Hermann Hesse who spoke about India and then by reading about Ramana Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti and the Buddha," Miralles tells THE WEEK on the sidelines of the recently held Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode. More on that Indian influence later.

Today, at 55, the Catalan cannot escape the expectation that comes with the Ikigai fame-the book, first published in Spanish, "became viral in two, three weeks" and is now available in "66 languages". "I had written many other books," he says. "They were not centred around one topic. So, when I used to go to a literature festival, I would talk about my novel, travels or psychology. Since Ikigai got released, 99 per cent of my interviews or conversations are on this topic. So, I must accept that it is very famous around the world, and I am like an ambassador of this topic."

Ikigai's success, perhaps, is no surprise in an age where terms like anti-aging and reverse aging trend. The book-clothed in a beautiful powder blue cover with a burst of cherry blossoms-is the culmination of a crucial investigation that Miralles and García undertook in Okinawa, Japan. At the centre of the Okinawan way of life is the philosophy that everyone has an 'ikigai'-a purpose for living. "And, in this place of centenarians, we discovered that there was a link between longevity and purpose," says Miralles. "We started exploring what this purpose is, what ikigai is, and it opened a big field of investigation."