Of life's mysteries
Farida Shaikh goes philosophical over a tale
Life of Pi
Yaan Martel
Penguin Books India
Life of Pi is a survival story by Canadian writer Yaan Martel. Ironically, it is perhaps, if not more, a survival story for the writer himself!
The book is about Pi of Pondicherry who with his family on board a cargo ship sets on a migration journey to Canada. A sea storm strikes, the ship sinks. Pi is the sole survivor on a lifeboat in the company of animals, including a Royal Bengal Tiger.
Martel named the tiger Richard Parker after an Edgar Allan Poe character from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). This was 'a clerical error,' and the given name of the animal, 'Thirsty,' was dropped for 'of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative.' This is one of the many instances of satirical humour in the book.
Martel is grateful to Piscine Molitor Patel whose life story he narrated in the first person. He is thankful at meeting accidentally Mr. Francis Adirubasamy in the coffee house on Nehru Street who got him the connections to Patel, the main character of the story and made him 'believe in God.' This happened in Pondicherry, a town with a zoo and a botanical garden and was the capital of French India for long.
The Penguin India edition of the novel is like a textbook with class assignments on each of the chapters to make it suitable for a college curriculum. The cover design and illustration is by Anoop Patnak. Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac has illustrated the new 2007 edition after publishers and newspapers launched a worldwide competition to find an artist to illustrate Life of Pi.
In 2003 and again in 2008, two theatre groups in England produced the adaptation of the novel into a play. Alfonso Cuaron, director of the third Harry Potter movie, expressed interest in making a film from the novel. For the French version of the book, Martel was also awarded and he wrote the text of the musical composition 'you are where you are'.
The book in three parts presents the life of Pi as an adult in the first and last part; the second part is the major section and deals with Pi as a lone teenager struggling to survive.
Martel also expresses his gratitude to three Japanese professionals for help in completing the book. In a letter, Mr.Okamoto of the Japanese Ministry of Transport notes that investigation on the accident failed to locate the possible cause for the sinking of the ship--- Tsimsum. The points examined were major hull breach, major weather disturbance in the region on that particular day, other ship mishaps in the area, and one ship colliding with another ship. Tsimsum was 29 years old and refitted in 1970.
This refers to the end part of the book. The reader by then has sailed through 227 pages of Pi's struggling survival experience, and the long drawn climax of the story. The reader begins to believe that it was fait accompli that Pi and Richard Parker survived the shipwreck; only to be jolted back by the finding that there was no plausible cause for the cargo ship to sink and turning Pi into an orphan! Is this then only a make believe story? Is it what Kierkegaard meant when he said, 'Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced'? The end of the story is anticlimactic.
The novel has a philosophical flair similar to Martel's up coming work in 2010. It comes together with an essay with the same title, 'A 20th century shirt' that deals with holocaust and talk between a monkey and a donkey over a shirt.
Pi is an agnostic; he is born into Hinduism, then he transfers himself without a qualm to Christianity, and then he gets drawn to bonds of brotherhood in Islam.
Pi as a young man, takes a double major in religious studies and zoology. He chooses to study sloth because all these are 'calm, quiet and introspective,' and 'sooth my shattered self.'
Martel in beautiful text makes the reader aware of the abundance of wealth in the Pacific. '…Life is a peephole' and 'only fear can defeat life.' The conscious realization that 'the presence of God is the finest of rewards' and 'I felt I saw her I don't quite mean it literally, I felt I saw her' is Pi's revelation, sense of peace, unity harmony, of science and religion. And also 'I felt like a small circle coinciding with the centre of a larger one.'According to Martel, Islam is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion; and then he questions, 'Was there any reward greater than life, and any punishment worse than death?'
Life of Pi is an imaginative story of survival and faith, on man's relationship to God and nature---animals. Man's survival is deeply rooted in faith, 'believing something sincerely can make it, if not completely real, at least close to it'. Martel's book is a metaphysical exploration into the deepest of life's mysteries.
Farida Shaikh is a critic and social analyst .
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