Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Ever heard of someone named after err – not a historical figure, not an incarnation of God, not a renowned poet, not even a human being, but a swimming pool? Meet the protagonist of ‘Life of Pi’ – Piscine Molitor Patel, named by his swimming enthusiast uncle after a famous swimming pool in Paris. If you find this weird, let me warn you - the name of the protagonist of this book is one of the relatively less weird things about the story.

Although ‘Life of Pi’ is a fiction novel, it is narrated in a non-fiction, anecdotal format. The Canadian author who is in India on a grant to find a story for his third book, after a lukewarm response to his second book, chances upon a stranger in a coffee house in Pondicherry who promises to tell a story that will make him believe in God. And thus begins the story of Piscine Molitor Patel.

Pi Patel, born to a family in south India has spent most of his childhood in Pondicherry, where his father owns a large zoo. For a good part of his childhood, Pi is teased as ‘Pissing Patel’ and other such names. A Hindu by birth, Pi accidently ventures into a church while on a family vacation where he meets Father Martin, who introduces him to Christianity. A year later, Pi meets a Muslim baker who takes him to visit the mosque. Soon enough, Pi is a practicing Hindu, Christian and Muslim, silencing the religious saints who claim that he cannot follow all three religions and he must choose one with the simple answer – “I just want to love God.”

“One other time I felt God come so close to me. It was in Canada, much later. I was visiting friends in the country. It was winter. I was out alone on a walk on their large property and returning to the house. It was a clear, sunny day after a night of snowfall. All nature was blanketed in white. As I was coming up to the house, I turned by head. There was a wood and in that wood, a small clearing. A breeze or perhaps it was an animal, had shaken a branch. Fine snow was falling through the air, glittering in the sun light. In that falling golden dust, in that sun-splashed clearing, I saw the Virgin Mary. Why her, I don’t know. My devotion to her is secondary. But it was her. Her skin was pale. She was wearing a white dress and a blue cloak; I remember being struck by their pleats and folds. When I say I saw her, I don’t quite mean it literally, though she did have body and color. I felt I saw her, a vision beyond vision. I stopped and squinted. She looked beautiful and supremely regal. She was smiling at me with loving kindness. After some seconds, she left me. My heart beat with fear and joy.
The presence of God is the finest of rewards.”

Pi’s religious inclination is scorned by his elder brother Ravi in colorful words – “Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you’re going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.”

At another point, Pi narrates the incident of a lady in Toronto who was his foster mother, one of my favorite paragraphs in the entire book. Here it goes – “Though she has lived in Toronto for over thirty years, her French-speaking mind still slips on occasion on the understanding of English sounds. And so, when she first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn’t hear right. She heard ‘Hairless Christians’, and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.”

When Pi is sixteen, his family decides to immigrate to Canada due to the political instability in the country. The Pondicherry zoo is shut down and most of the animals are sold off to various zoos in US and some in Canada. Pi, his parents, and his brother leave India onboard the Japanese cargo ship Tsimtsum.

This is where the second part of the story begins and it begins with the words ‘The ship sank.’ With the entire crew of the ship, and his family dead, Pi is the lone survivor, lone human survivor that is, along with a hyena, a zebra, a female organgutan and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker atop a single lifeboat measuring eight feet by twenty-six feet. Having been around his father’s zoo has given Pi a good knowledge of animals and a sound understanding of animal psychology. He also knows what his odds of surviving are as evident by the following sentences. “Of the five senses, tigers rely the most of their sight. Their eyesight is very keen, especially in detecting motion. Their hearing is good. Their smell is average. I mean compared to other animals, of course. Next to Richard Parker, I was deaf, blind and nose-dead.”

Pi survives by remaining on the tarpaulin of the lifeboat, sheltered and away from the vision of Richard Parker who is under the tarpaulin. Soon enough the hyena kills and eats both the zebra and the orangutan, while Pi witnesses the horrifying scene from his little shelter. Its over three days in the lifeboat and finally Richard Parker overcomes his seasickness and kills the hyena, without noticing the terrified Pi. Somewhere during the mayhem, Pi narrates the comical story of why the Bengal tiger was so named, apparently due to a clerical error. Richard Parker was actually the name of the hunter that caught Thirsty, the tiger cub and its mother. The befuddled shipping clerk switched the names, and so the tiger cub arrives at the Pondicherry zoo as Richard Parker, while Thirsty None Given is the recorded name of the hunter. A very interesting story indeed.

Another couple of days later, plagued by intense thirst, Pi ventures into the lifeboat to find a box of emergency supplies – emergency rations, first-aid kit, fresh drinking water, survival manual, among other useful items, enough ration to last him 93 days at sea. But there’s nothing to tell him how to survive on a lifeboat with a tiger onboard.

After considering several crazy options, Pi realizes that he must keep supplying the tiger with food and drinking water, or soon enough the tiger will attack and kill him. There is no other way. He must keep the tiger well-fed, if he is to survive. Using the emergency supplies, Pi builds a small raft, ties it to the lifeboat and jumps on to it every night, returning to the lifeboat only to collect food and water supplies.

Soon after, Pi begins training Richard Parker to accept him as the alpha animal. The routine involves rocking the lifeboat to cause seasickness to the tiger, while blowing a whistle at full blast, and repeating the routine tirelessly so that the animal begins to associate the whistle sound with its nausea. Once this association is complete and unambiguous in the animal’s mind, one shrill blow of the whistle will act as a deterrent against untoward behavior. At the same time, Pi also begins fishing – fish, turtles, dorados, dolphins, whatever he can find to feed the tiger and himself.

Pi is almost getting used to the routine when the lifeboat is seized by a tumultuous storm and unceasing rain. During one of his periods of semi-consciousness, Pi loses his eyesight. At this time, another lifeboat arrives and Pi has a conversation with a man, apparently who is also lost at sea. The man comes onboard Pi’s lifeboat under a garb of friendship, but actually to kill him and eat his flesh. Unaware of the presence of the tiger, the man steps on the floor of the boat and is instantly killed and eaten by the tiger.

In the following days, Pi’s lifeboat miraculously reaches an island, but it is no ordinary island. A botanical discovery, the island is made of a tight mesh of algae, with nothing on it but trees and hundreds and thousands of meerkats, a type of mongoose. On the island, Pi and Richard Parker discover fresh drinking water, and an unlimited supply of meerkats, that can be easily hunted for food. For a few days, Pi explores the island during the day and returns to the lifeboat every night, a routine that is mirrored by Richard Parker. One night, Pi decides to sleep at the island atop a tree. Upon discovering the teeth of a human being, just the teeth and nothing else, Pi realizes that the island is carnivorous by night and one step on the algae is enough to cause a burning sensation on your skin the entire night.

The next morning, Pi decides to leave the island. Even though he is in a position to leave behind Richard Parker, who undoubtedly would have perished in the island at night, Pi waits until evening for the tiger to return to the lifeboat before pushing it off the shore. After a total of 227 days at sea, the lifeboat reaches Mexico. As soon as it touches land, Richard Parker jumps off the lifeboat and disappears into a nearby forest. Pi’s first reaction is to cry and cry inconsolably. While he is happy about finally reaching land, Pi is deeply hurt at the tiger’s unceremonious departure, without any gesture, not even a glance at him. During his ordeal at sea, Pi has come to love Richard Parker, who was his only companion, even though he posed a danger to his life.

During his recovery at a hospital in Mexico, Pi is visited by two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport who are investigating into the sinking of the Japanese ship. Pi narrates the story to the two gentlemen who find it incredible and ask a million questions. Not completely believing the story, the two officials ask Pi to tell them a story without animals. Pi obliges them by narrating another story with people, instead of animals surviving on the lifeboat. These people kill each other and die one by one, leaving Pi as the lone survivor in the end. Pi asks them if they preferred the story with the animals and they reply in the affirmative. “And so it goes with God,” says Pi before starting to cry.

Eventually, in the report that is prepared by the Japanese officials on the sinking of the Japanese ship, they acknowledge the original story of Pi Patel, and the extraordinary and difficult circumstances during which he survived in the company of an adult Bengal tiger. This is where the story ends.

To me, one point which is explicitly unspoken about the story mightily stands out. Throughout his ordeal at sea, during those 227 days or over seven months, alone in the sea with the tiger, having lost his entire family, uncertain of surviving another day or night, perpetually drenched by the ocean, hungry most of the time, scared, tired, injured, alone, Pi never loses his faith. He keeps praying to the Gods every single day as a part of his routine, and that probably is what keeps him alive and gives him the strength to strive to live.