Book 5 : Life of Pi

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 Book 5:  Life of Pi

Author : Yann Martel

Genre:  Fiction or is it?

Tone:   Philosophical

Published: 2001

Life of Pi cover.png


Why I chose this book: Its year 2002. Personally a milestone year with the birth of my first child. I had picked up the book somewhere in 2012 or so based on several recommendations but I never got to finish it. In fact I never reached the part where Pi gets stranded in sea because ......the movie came about and we all watched it and then there was no novelty left in the book. So this time I picked it up to finish an unfulfilled promise. A Mann Booker Prize winning novel at No 38 on the amazon list.

My Take:

It is but inevitable, that if you happen to read this book after having watched the movie, the images that you see in front of your eyes are of Suraj Sharma (actor in the movie) and the magnificently beautiful Richard Parker. (The shiny, glorious Bengal Tiger). So if the extraordinary cinematography of the movie hampers your imagination, I wouldn't blame you, but it is in the first part of the story, the pre-sea adventures of Pi that I found interest in. His life as a kid living in a zoo is filled with wild wonders and religious allegories. There is a moment of innocence where the younger Pi asks why he couldn't believe in Vishnu, Christ, and Allah all at once. Neither his agnostic parents nor do his educated teachers have an answer. Pi is a spiritual soul stuck in an adult world. Cut to part -two, Martel's brilliance shines through were Pi is stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific ocean with a tiger, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena. Odd choice of animals but metaphorically brilliant. 


It is Man Vs Wild. 


In the Pacific!


The urge to survive is so strong and so brutal that the thin line between human and animal blurs. The vegetarian Pi hacks away fish and chomps on turtle meat while trying to be the alpha male competing with a wild cat! There are moments of grief, moments of relief, ecstasy, sorrow, joy, musings, and philosophy. There is a moment in the book where I turned away my face in disgust like I would while watching a movie. There are moments of the divine. The book is spiritual in a very odd sense of the way.

Pi's unwavering faith in God is endearing. His resilience in the face of adversity: inspirational. It surely is a roller coaster ride on a huge ocean wave. Literally and figuratively. 


Do not do the mistake of not reading the post -sea story. There lies a mystery deeper than the sea.


"Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go , a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love."

vs

"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation"

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