Geoff in Jaipur

He first talks music — and I listen. “When I was working on But Beautiful,I found out about the similarities between jazz and Indian classical music. I first listened to Carnatic violin pieces,then switched to Hindustani and fell in love with the sarangi,” says Dyer. In December 2006,he flew down for the Chennai music festival where he listened to Bombay Jaishree — and he still can’t come up with an appropriate word to describe the experience. “I had only heard Indian classical singers who recorded in the UK or the US. But here were artists who I had never heard and I was curious to know about their music,” says Dyer.

Curiosity becomes him,it is the foundation on which his books are built. Dyer says his account of Varanasi could be called touristy and,hence,cliched. “I am guilty as charged,but I like to think that I go to a slightly less superficial level. I was drawn to the metaphysics of the place irrespective of the mythological realm of Hinduism. Varanasi is a generator of all sorts of energies and I wanted to explore that,” says Dyer,who first discovered the magic of Varanasi,thanks to the photographs of Raghubir Singh and William Gedney,an American who came to India in 1969 and documented the life of the sacred city over 14 months.

Dyer’s prose is much like him,you are let in on a joke,but you get it only much later. “I try to find the balance between being entirely serious and entirely comic and the transition is not easy to make. But I come from England and there,you understand a joke is a joke only at the last moment. I hope to successfully do the same in my books,” says Dyer.

He’s now working on a book that he claims has little commercial appeal and very boring. “It is a shot-by-shot summary of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 sci-fi film Stalker. The film means a great deal to me,it addresses certain metaphysical questions. By summarising the film as a book,I am allowed to address the same questions,in my own way,” says Dyer. And if it doesn’t sell,he doesn’t care. “I’m doing something with my time. Not having anything to do worries me more than commercial success.” There’s little chance of either happening.