For the love of God... Review on Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Searching everywhere,

for as long as we stay.....

• Madz [2004]

What does it take to win a Booker prize? Well, you should be from the Commonwealth, you should have an outrageous level of imagination, and of course, you should be able to recreate that imagination into the minds of the reader... And Yann Martel does that and more in Life Of Pi...

I have a personal affection towards books that are narrated in the first person.. They make me feel that I am a part of the world created by the author, the events narrated are happening around me,.. that the sole purpose of the author and protagonist is to relate the story to me, and no one else, that I am the most important and the only person the author is concerned about..

So I began reading this masterpiece.. My friend telling me the story here is named Piscene Molitor Patel.. He is named after a swimming pool.. After facing endless ridicules over his name, he switches over to a new name, ''Pi''.. that most enigmatic of all mathematical figures... Nothing defines Pi... Rather, Pi defines the earth, the motions, the geography, the science, the life... Pi is a 16 year old, resident in Pondicherry, son of a zoo owner..

Early on in life, he is influenced by God.. Religion becomes as important a part of his life as the air.. He finds the meaning of life in religion, he finds internal peace in religion, he finds himself in religion.. In his strive to attain peace and himself, he embraces Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.. He believes religions are just different paths towards that same summit, and he embraces all the religions because he finds meaning in the actions that each religion advocates, he connects to the world outside with divinity, he makes God his central focal point..

Then comes the Emergency in India, and the Patels decide to move to Canada.. They board a Japanese cargo ship, Tsimtsum, crewed by Taiwanese.. Unfortunate events transpire and Tsimtsum sinks a rainy night.. Pi survives on a lifeboat and he has for company four other members... a zebra with a broken leg, a hyena, a female orangutan and Richard Parker, a 450 pound Bengal tiger...

When I first heard of the plot, I thought that this would be funny sort of book.. you know, the kind of riddles you have where a farmer has to cross a river, with a wolf and a goat and only two can cross at a time etc... but far from it, Life of Pinothing short of brilliant, it tells us the story of survival in the most extreme of circumstances nature has to offer, against the worst enemies that one can encounter... If you think that Pi faced his greatest challenge against the animals in his lifeboat, you are wrong.. he faced the greatest danger from himself... from his idle mind, that would keep thinking about the tragedy that occurred, about his most loved family whom he would now never see in his lifetime, about his Mother who loved him more than anyone... The same human mind that keep you alive, can also kill you off...

The animals in the life boat fight against each other and soon Pi is left alone with an animal.. Now, survival becomes a routine for Pi, for both of them, because each needs the other to live.. Pi soon learns how to live in this most hardest of all conditions,.. where the monotone of blue, of the sky and of the water seemed colourless,.. where the tongue is dry and parched even when you are surrounded by water... where you are all alone, even with so much life around you....

Of course, besides the surviving animal on board, Pi has another companion... God.. To whom he prays day and night... for survival, for peace, for everything... Living becomes a great irony, where the most beautiful of Nature's creations (the Sun, the sea, the rain) are Pi's enemies, while the enemies aboard the life boat becomes Pi's friends... Yet, Pi can't help but feel wonder at being able to perform the action of living in such grand a stage, wherein he has God as his only audience and desire to live and divinity as the sole strength...

Soon, Pi goes around establishing the alpha-omega relationship between himself and the surviving animal, which deals with defining who is the superior (alpha) and who is the inferior (omega) among the two..

Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution finds an implicit reference in the book... and perhaps Man is the only animal that does not follow it... While animals in the wild learn to adapt themselves to the surroundings in order to survive; by growing furs in colder regions, by changing skin colour to the surroundings... While Man changes the environment to suit his needs, with the power of his brain, and of his creations... he blatantly violates the Darwin Theory... But does that mean that Man is wrong? No, Man is only obeying the Darwin's Theory, he is surviving on the basis of his greatest strength, his mind... and of course putting it to use to violate the theory... which all comes a never ending vicious spiral.. Pi also experiences this spiral, once when he is the observer (in the zoo) and he watched the animals in the zoo surviving with each other through symbiotic relations, and once when he is a part of it (on the lifeboat), where he has to force a symbiotic relation with the animal in the boat...

Over two-thirds of the book delves in Pi's experiences on the life boat... So, the amount of conversational knowledge is less and action based knowledge is all that is described... Yann Martel plays with words beautifully and allows the reader to smile and cry at the experiences that Pi faced during his epic voyage...

Special thanks to Steve Vai, who has composed the great song whose name I have used as the name for the review... Could not find a more appropriate name....

Pi loses everything he has ever loved in his life in that voyage... his family... Life may seem very cruel, after all, losing your loved ones and never to see them again is the worst of all feelings... But, Life is definitely worth living, after all, without living a life, you cannot have a loved one.....