the life of pi by yann martel

i do not know what it is about every book i read, but i am always so mesmerized at the way they are narrated. perhaps we admire most about others what we do not own or are ourselves. my life long dream has been to write a book of pulitzer/booker quality. yeah, i do have a pretty untamed imagination.

as soon as i finished the book, the first question i had in mind was, no not about god, :-) but if this story carried any truth at all.

i frantically searched the net, checked if tsimtsum existed at all or if it sunk, asked around and finally got a written journal from martel himself claiming it to be a work of fiction.

was i disappointed? in a way, yes. i would have wanted the algae island and the meerkats to have been true. they seemed an exact replica of some of the wild stuff i constantly dream about. mum says the kolkata museum houses such an algae.

however, the book being a complete fiction, only expands my admiration for martel. he made an impossible story credible. that is how simply i would put it. it renewed my faith in the ability of novelists to generate the most outrageous journal into something plausible and may i add, believable.

the reading was mainly on the lrt to and back from my appointments. there were times i would laugh out loud and then suddenly realise i was on a public transport. or i would miss my stop and take the same train back. i literally got lost in this story and there were times i imagined i was pi, more than once actually. remember the part about `untamed imagination'?

frankly, i could smell the sea along with everything else that i did not wish to smell. it is quite an adventure you know, being stuck in the middle of nowhere with something so ferocious. many times along the journey, i wished parker and i could just lie next to each other in comfort and support.

this book promises the belief in god after its completion. being a non-believer, i delighted in those words and having been the one to suggest it to the book club, i consumed every word. did i become a believer?

how do i explain this the best way?

there isn't one correct solution to any situation. there may be many or there may be none.
every element lives in harmonious relation with its neighbour. every experience has its purpose. every event has its significance.
life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced, a story to be written.
are both reality and fantasy dwelling on the same duality concept that good and bad are floating on or is everything a part of the universe and therefore no analysis needs to be made?
it offers no answers. but it suggests. and questions. you will get out of it what you perceive of it and what you need to have for the moment. and if you know that you are within a cage, it will rattle the bars of your cage, whatever that cage may be.

i was thrilled at pi becoming a devout follower or member of three religions all at the same time claiming he only wants to love god. it sort of proved so many things i say as a non-believer and it made me wonder if such a thing would ever be allowed to exist. martel cleverly brings in three different religious leaders who come together and insist that pi belongs to their religion wholly and totally. they spite and ridicule each others' religions. does one have to belittle another religion to prove his religion is good?


i asked shamshul today about islam. shamshul is a muslim. he is also my colleague and friend.

i dreamt of mecca last night.

this morning when i met shamshul, i asked him if i could visit mecca, being a non-muslim. he said saudi arabia has strict rules allowing only muslims to enter the area. then i asked him, if i was a muslim, would i be able to practise other religions? is there any thing in the quran that says i simply cannot be a devotee or believe in any other religion? he said yes. it clearly says that idol worship is not allowed, and god cannot give birth nor be given birth to. he simply exists. and the wise men are all known as prophets and not god.

sigh.

i started reading angels and demons today. is god the big bang? is god a he? is god mother earth, which would make her a she? is god antimatter and matter annihilating to photons?

hmm. dan brown is something else!

pi is cast adrift in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and at first a hidden 450 lbs bengal tiger, which is spotted later.

i loved the fact that martel called the orangutan, orange juice. it made me smile and made me smile again. and long after i finished the book, i continued to smile thinking of orange juice. i know people would rather concentrate on the magnamanous richard parker but like i said, orange juice touched my soul.

the hyena devours the zebra and orange juice. richard parker eats the hyena. and so it is only pi and parker on the boat for 227 days at the heart of the pacific ocean. pi realises the only hope of survival is to tame parker and to help feed him. he overcomes the challenges, learns to take it one day at a time, and looks for ways to keep himself and parker alive through sheer desperation. the long days at sea takes a toll on his health and mind.

martel dazzled me with his simple prose and his mastery of the mysteries around the story. if there are parts of the book that come up short, i almost do not notice them.

did he deserve the 2002 booker prize for fiction?

without a doubt!

audacious, exhilarating, brilliant. it is a timeless youthful book, not falling into any easy categories. it is paradoxical and gently and perhaps humorously challenging, researched in its scope and fascinatingly unique different from the other shipwreck stories i have read. it embarks bravely on life's mysteries, faith and perceptions, reality and illusions, strength and harmony. the life of pi is a delicious treat to savour.

not an easy genre to work on. his narrations remain just about credible. pi lands in mexico. the japanese interview him and do not believe his story. here, martel challenges his readers to completely disbelief in all he has written and he comes up with another story just as easily in just a page or two, making it just as real with a twist that turns the tiger into pi's own alter-ego.

one has to choose between mundane reality and a beautiful fantasy. but then, can the truth not be just as beautiful? most believe in the second story even though the whole book is about the first. the implication is that we all believe what we want to believe.

martel started the book in 1997. it took him four years to complete it. he meant it to explore the nature of reality, the wondrous and vastness, along with the strength of mother nature, the possibilities of humans and animals co-existing, the nature of religion and its relationship to humans and the concept of survival.

his novel is apparently coming to the screen. interestingly, it's being produced and co-written by m. night shyamalan, and directed by alfonso cuaron.

so would i recommend a package of india, adolescence , the pacific ocean, zoos, animals and zoology, religion, philosophy and spirituality, a japanese sinking ship and survival, canada and algae as a read? :-)

most definitely. its all in the essence of pi.