The Life of Pi - Imagine....
Imagine a sixteen-year-old boy adrift in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. Imagine him alone on a lifeboat, with the fact that his parents and brother have drowned, weighing upon his loneliness, his life, as he knew it, shattered, nothing left for him to live for. Now, imagine him with an indefatigable will to survive, an unflappable faith in God and a royal Bengal tiger for company. On such a tantalizing setting, proceeds, The Life of Pi- the Booker prize winning novel by Yann Martel, tracing a magical journey that starts from the once-upon-a-time French colony of Pondicherry in South India.
The premise upon which this novel is built is thought provoking. The purpose, which we attach to life, is governed predominantly by whom we love and what we own. So when you lose both of these, does life cease to be purposeful? Is it not easy to give in, lose resolve, and become disillusioned as to what the point of living life is? But in such trying times, a deeper truth appears upon you, when you realize that there is no fixed purpose to life, when you realize that living for yourself is a purpose, and living life to experience life itself is a purpose. And when such realization dawns, there are other elements that you look towards, to lend meaning to your life, like belief in God or like co-existing with a wild beast! And that is precisely what Piscine Molitor Patel does in The Life of Pi. As the sole human survivor of a sunken cargo ship, he looks at establishing his superiority over a 450-pound tiger, his companion on the lifeboat, which is the only way to survive, as the purpose of his life.
Yann Martel uses the simplest of language, and a casual style to create such vivid lasting pictures. He plays on your imagination, making you see the reality of having to survive with a wild animal, the desperation that the need to survive can drive one to, and how in some situations the most unexpected things can fill you with a want to live. The fact that Pi is a zoo owner’s son makes him better equipped to understand the psyche of the tiger and Yann gives some spectacular insights into the animal world, the mind of the animals, and how they think and behave. The small paragraph where he analogises a zoo to a hotel and the description of the strategy to establish domination over the tiger, makes very nice reading. It is when Pi is adrift and learning the means of surviving, that the strength of Yann’s writing comes to the fore. The four days I was reading the novel, even at times when I was not reading, there was this subconscious worry for Pi at the back of my mind, and the feeling of being adrift seemed to pervade.
The transformation of Pi from being vegetarian to eating raw fish, turtle meat and drinking turtle blood is so realistic that you don’t feel the least bit of revulsion or disbelief. And even when he tries eating tiger feces and casually accepts tasting bits of human flesh, you can understand that, it is what anybody in his position might be forced to do. And as Pi settles into a routine, he finds solace and purpose in prayer, in appreciating the beauty- of marine life, of a moonlit star-filled night sky, of the feline grace of the tiger, and in imagining mammoth sized portions of all his favorite foods. And finally after an adventure in an oasis like, yet dark and mysterious, island and an encounter with a fellow drifter in the Pacific, Pi manages to reach land.
Pi goes on to narrate his story to two Japanese officials from the Japanese ministry of Transport, who are investigating the cause of the sinking of the ship. They listen to him with complete skepticism and disbelief and they assume that his tale of surviving with a tiger is just fiction-a result of his traumatic experience. And to humor them Pi goes on to tell them a different version, uncannily similar to the original, but which he tailors to make it seem more believable to the investigators. And here comes the true essence of The Life of Pi- Yann Martel destroys the imaginary world he so realistically and painstakingly built for the readers by sowing a few seeds of the dangerous weed called doubt in their minds. Till that point, I had no qualms about believing whatever he had described, and not for an instant did I doubt its veracity nor question its plausibility. But the moment he offers a more common, a more tangible version of the story, an uncertainty sets in and you wonder if it was all just a creation of Pi’s imagination. And it ultimately boils down to what you want to believe- the tangible or the magical. And I chose the latter for, in it I see- a tale of indomitable courage and resilience, a suggestion of the existence of forces beyond our understanding, that most choose to call God and a message that beyond the emotional, the physical and the material, the purpose of life is to live….
The premise upon which this novel is built is thought provoking. The purpose, which we attach to life, is governed predominantly by whom we love and what we own. So when you lose both of these, does life cease to be purposeful? Is it not easy to give in, lose resolve, and become disillusioned as to what the point of living life is? But in such trying times, a deeper truth appears upon you, when you realize that there is no fixed purpose to life, when you realize that living for yourself is a purpose, and living life to experience life itself is a purpose. And when such realization dawns, there are other elements that you look towards, to lend meaning to your life, like belief in God or like co-existing with a wild beast! And that is precisely what Piscine Molitor Patel does in The Life of Pi. As the sole human survivor of a sunken cargo ship, he looks at establishing his superiority over a 450-pound tiger, his companion on the lifeboat, which is the only way to survive, as the purpose of his life.
Yann Martel uses the simplest of language, and a casual style to create such vivid lasting pictures. He plays on your imagination, making you see the reality of having to survive with a wild animal, the desperation that the need to survive can drive one to, and how in some situations the most unexpected things can fill you with a want to live. The fact that Pi is a zoo owner’s son makes him better equipped to understand the psyche of the tiger and Yann gives some spectacular insights into the animal world, the mind of the animals, and how they think and behave. The small paragraph where he analogises a zoo to a hotel and the description of the strategy to establish domination over the tiger, makes very nice reading. It is when Pi is adrift and learning the means of surviving, that the strength of Yann’s writing comes to the fore. The four days I was reading the novel, even at times when I was not reading, there was this subconscious worry for Pi at the back of my mind, and the feeling of being adrift seemed to pervade.
The transformation of Pi from being vegetarian to eating raw fish, turtle meat and drinking turtle blood is so realistic that you don’t feel the least bit of revulsion or disbelief. And even when he tries eating tiger feces and casually accepts tasting bits of human flesh, you can understand that, it is what anybody in his position might be forced to do. And as Pi settles into a routine, he finds solace and purpose in prayer, in appreciating the beauty- of marine life, of a moonlit star-filled night sky, of the feline grace of the tiger, and in imagining mammoth sized portions of all his favorite foods. And finally after an adventure in an oasis like, yet dark and mysterious, island and an encounter with a fellow drifter in the Pacific, Pi manages to reach land.
Pi goes on to narrate his story to two Japanese officials from the Japanese ministry of Transport, who are investigating the cause of the sinking of the ship. They listen to him with complete skepticism and disbelief and they assume that his tale of surviving with a tiger is just fiction-a result of his traumatic experience. And to humor them Pi goes on to tell them a different version, uncannily similar to the original, but which he tailors to make it seem more believable to the investigators. And here comes the true essence of The Life of Pi- Yann Martel destroys the imaginary world he so realistically and painstakingly built for the readers by sowing a few seeds of the dangerous weed called doubt in their minds. Till that point, I had no qualms about believing whatever he had described, and not for an instant did I doubt its veracity nor question its plausibility. But the moment he offers a more common, a more tangible version of the story, an uncertainty sets in and you wonder if it was all just a creation of Pi’s imagination. And it ultimately boils down to what you want to believe- the tangible or the magical. And I chose the latter for, in it I see- a tale of indomitable courage and resilience, a suggestion of the existence of forces beyond our understanding, that most choose to call God and a message that beyond the emotional, the physical and the material, the purpose of life is to live….
posted by Dreamer at 3:15 AM
2 Comments:
Some people may have experienced soul-searching and faith-enforcing moments.And some can arrive at it after having pondering over a book like this!
Being deeply sentimental about the subject of the Unfathomable, its cheering to read that someone else by virtue of cogitation and reading can arrive at the same conclusion.
Wonder why piece has not invited to comment?
(of the positive kind ofcourse!)
I wonder why too:)....guess the law that comments are directly proportional to readership is working rather too well....
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