Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.
Gruesome and beautiful, that is how I would like to describe this book.
It is the story, as you will have deduced from its final sentence printed above, of a boy and a tiger, and, what you had not deduced, religion and philosophy, surviving on a lifeboat after a shipwreck. You have intestines being cut out, skin and flesh being torn away (from a living body, of course), bloodshed and murder and violence at its best (mostly towards animals, though).
It is not for the vegetarians, definitely.
And then you have life lessons, revelations, and philosophical and religious thoughts, all mangled into the fabric of the novel. These objects generally tend to make the narrative heavy and uninteresting, and it did get so at times. But I had faith in Martel, and he didn’t disappoint. After moving into a sufficient depth, the story gets gripping, and Martel wins; primarily my attention, and also, arguably of similar importance, the Booker.
Despite the controversy regarding plagiarism; I would say that the essence of the work is quite original, and Martel has been able to present me with a sufficient amount of new knowledge, and has persuaded me to look at life and sloths in a different way. (Okay, the life thing was a lie, but definitely the sloths, and also alpha and omega and flying fishes)
Anyway …
Now, whatisinthisbook?
It starts off with a monologue from the author, about how he travelled to India to write a story. He travelled to Pondicherry, and met the man who was the mama of Piscine Molitor Patel. He tells him that he has a story that will “make you believe in God.”
So the author meets Mr. Patel in Toronto, who agrees to tell him his story. Mr. Patel then becomes the main narrator. Initially he narrates the events in India, which led up to his families boarding of the ‘Tsimtsum’, the ship which was to drown.
He talks about his naming, ‘Piscine’ after a swimming pool in France, which, due to the love of friends, turned to ‘Pissing’. Pissing Patel – a nice name; but somehow, he wasn’t satisfied, and he took care in promoting his new irrational name, Pi Patel.
Religion came into his life at a very young age. A Hindu by birth, he was baptized after being introduced to the Christian faith at the age of fourteen; and also converted to Islam after coming in touch with Mr. Kumar. He practices all the three with equal ease and devotion, till he is finally rounded up by a chance meeting with all his three religious gurus, who fight over him, and announce that he must choose one religion only.
“Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God,”: was how Pi replied (very tactful of Martel…very tactful).
When Indira Gandhi declares emergency, Pi’s father decides, enough is enough, and they head for Canada, after selling the animals in their zoo. On their way to Winnipeg, the ship, along with the cargo of animals, and Pi’s family, sinks.
And the real story begins: (trumpets!!)
Pi, the only survivor, is stranded on a lifeboat with a zebra with a visibly broken leg (bone jutting out), and a hyena. He saves, unknowingly, a tiger, a royal Bengal one, four hundred pounds of ferocious flesh, who had previously, erroneously and funnily enough, been named Richard Parker, after his captor. Somehow, an orangutan also comes up to the boat, seated over floating bananas (!!).
Then, in the next few days, as casually as I write it, the hyena devoured all the vegetarians on the boat except Pi (the goriness in the text is quite detailed), and then Mr. Parker dined on the hyena.
With him and Richard left on the lifeboat, the brave boy flees to another raft, tethered to the bigger and more stable lifeboat, and begins his heroic taming of the beast, armed with determination, a whistle, and sea-food. They don’t get enough food (mostly raw fish and fresh turtle meat, and also turtle blood), and in time, darkness descends upon their health and eyes.
Then, in mid pacific, they come across a blind Frenchman, who befriends the blind Pi, and gets on the boat to kill and eat him (probably); but is instead (serveshimright) eaten by Mr. Parker.
They then come across an island of algae, where Pi, who eats the algae, and the tiger, who eats the meerkats on the island, restore their health, upto the time when Pi finds a human tooth, and realizes that the island is, apparently, carnivorous.
They float for some more time, and finally find themselves on the coast of Mexico. Richard Parker quickly disembarks, and runs off into the jungle, without (and can you believe it?) even saying ‘bye’ to his fellow lifeboatmate of 227 days. Pi, quite naturally, becomes upset at this behavior.
Pi, finally then, is on land again.
In the last part, we find two comical investigators of the Tsimtsum’s shipping company. They, after providing a patient audience to his story, with utmost courtesy, remark:
“Mr. Patel, we don’t believe your story.”
“Well, misters, I don’t care”, I would have said, but anyway, Pi is not able to share my philosophy, and so he goes on to narrate another story, but this time without using animals and floating islands with meerkats, i.e. without any of the fantastical elements.
In that tale, Pi plays Pi himself, the zebra is a sailor with a broken leg, the hyena is a French cook, the orangutan is, wait for it, Pi’s mother, who gets butchered by the cook; but only after he eats the sailor. He is finally killed by Pi.
Which one (to believe)? Pi poses the open question to them, and also to the readers. (The officials chose the former in their report.)
“It doesn’t matter,” Pi would say, “their outcomes are the same.”
(...and I am reminded of something in my quantum physics course)
Again, this was very tactful of Martel ; the book would not have been what it is, if not for this last twist.
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