Mexican writer Octavio Paz was the most prominent Latin American to understand, analyse, interpret and promote India—intellectually and culturally—from a Latin American perspective in the 20th century. He had first-hand experience of India, having lived in Delhi for nearly seven years as a diplomat. Paz wrote numerous poems and articles on India, and his book Vislumbres de la India (In the Light of India) is regarded as one of the finest introductions to the country produced by a Latin American thinker. Even today, cultural visitors from the Spanish-speaking world travel across the country with Paz’s book as an “intimate guide”, seeing India through his eyes, trying to grasp its immense complexity.
In his new book, Indranil Chakravarty offers a comprehensive account of Paz’s years in India and his writings on India. Based on extensive research—including declassified diplomatic files and personal letters, and interviews with Indians and Latin Americans and Paz’s close associates—the book situates Paz’s engagement with India in a broader intellectual and historical context. Chakravarty’s knowledge of Latin America and Spanish literature, along with his fluency in Spanish, allows him to examine Paz’s work with Mexico’s longer cultural connections with India, predating Paz himself.
Paz’s first encounter with India was negative. Posted in 1951 as a junior diplomat to the newly opened Mexican Embassy in Delhi, he found himself deeply unhappy. Confronted by what he described as the “atrocious and immense Indian reality” of the early 1950s—an India grappling with poverty and post-Partition trauma—he withdrew into himself. During this six-month stay, he made few friends, stayed largely confined to his hotel, and felt miserable in the heat and dust of Delhi, where his status as a writer was not recognised. Later, Paz would reassess this response as partly a projection of his personal marital unhappiness and partly the result of unconscious western prejudices he had carried with him.
The Delhi posting stood in stark contrast to his colourful life in Paris, from where he had been transferred against his wishes. In Paris, Paz was enjoying his emergence as a poet and was immersed in a vibrant circle of European and Latin American artists and writers. As a low-ranking diplomat in Delhi, he sorely missed the Parisian charms and cafe conversations.
When Paz returned to India in 1962 as Mexico’s ambassador, remaining until 1968, the experience proved transformative. His ambassador status afforded him access, mobility and opportunity to travel widely. His relationships with people like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi enabled deep engagement with India’s political and cultural life. In fact, when Paz left India in 1968, Indira hosted a farewell party for him at her residence. During these years, Paz forged lasting friendships with leading Indian artists and writers. His large house on Prithviraj Road became a hub for creative exchanges, hosting Indian and Latin American thinkers alike. It was there, under a neem tree, that he married Marie Jose, his second wife.
Paz has repeatedly characterised his years in India as momentous. Paz said, “India has been my sentimental, artistic and spiritual education. Its influence can be seen in my poems, prose texts and in my life itself.” His creative output during his second stay in India was astounding. He wrote poems on Indian places and themes, and on figures such as the painter J. Swaminathan.
Paz immersed himself in India’s contemplative traditions, history, philosophy, art and literature, seeking to understand the country through its contradictions. He referred to Varanasi as incarnating ‘the sacred in all its incredible banality’. He found resonance in India as a spiritual home to his complex and labyrinthine Mexican identity. He said, “The strangeness of India brought to mind that other strangeness: my own country.”
Paz had planted ‘India’ in the minds of many Latin American artists and thinkers. His writings became a bridge between continents—blending eastern and western sensibilities in ways that enriched the literary landscapes of both.
Paz also left a deep imprint on modern Indian art. As a junior diplomat in 1951, he recognised Satish Gujral’s potential and selected him for a scholarship to Mexico, defying the opinion of other committee members. He also mentored several young Indian painters, helping them secure international scholarships and introducing them to major European and Latin American artists.
In his poem Cuento de dos jardines [A Tale of Two Gardens], Paz imagined his life as bookended by two gardens, primal in their association. One was the fig tree of his childhood home in Mexico, whose branches seemed to reach out to him through the window; the other was a sumptuous and evergreen neem tree at his ambassadorial house in Delhi, under whose shadow he took his marital vows with the woman of his life.
Excerpts from the poem:
A tree grew inside my head.
It grew inward.
Its roots are veins,
its branches nerves, thoughts its confused foliage.
Your glances light it up
and its fruits of shade
are oranges of blood, and pomegranates of fire.
Day breaks in the night of the body.
There, within, inside my head, the tree speaks.
Come closer, can you hear it?
There are already a number of articles and some publications on Paz’s passion for India. Chakravarty’s book is a valuable addition with new information and perspectives.
R. Viswanathan, former ambassador of India to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela, is an expert on Latin America.
THE TREE WITHIN—THE MEXICAN NOBEL LAUREATE OCTAVIO PAZ’S YEARS IN INDIA
By Indranil Chakravarty
Published by Penguin
Price: Rs460; pages: 555