Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Unbelievable Life of Pi

I'm not a risk-taker when it comes to collecting books, preferring to pick up books I have already read and liked or classics, bestsellers or award-winning books that guarantee a good read. So, when I bought the Booker Prize-winning novel, 'Life of Pi', I knew it would be good.
Though I'm a literature student, it is with a degree of shame that I admit to never looking at a novel from a critical point of view. I'm purely subjective, never bothering about literary devices or analysing the content, structure or language. Therefore, instead of focussing on its allegorical references or recurring theme of religion and faith, I would like to write about what I took away from that book.
The premise of the novel is simple and interesting. A ship sinks leaving a sixteen-year-old boy in the company of a Bengal tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The story chronicles the adventures of an ordinary Indian boy, Pi Patel, the son of a zookeeper, who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances; giving us a credible back-story of his childhood and early life in Pondicherry.
By revealing in the beginning that he has survived the ordeal, the suspense may appear to have been quashed but nothing can prepare us for the chilling, mind-numbing moment when Pi watches the ship sink, leaving him clueless about his family's whereabouts. If that were not enough to shake the reader, the presence of a tiger, a zebra, a hyena and an orangutan in a lifeboat with the hero is enough to make us wonder how he could have survived for 227 days in the ocean. That is the beauty and genius of the author's writing! Never for a moment is the attention allowed to wander as Pi painstakingly sketches his daily activities and triumphs over nature and monster.
We weep for his loss. We marvel at his presence of mind as he negotiates life on the lifeboat with the tiger. We sympathise with him as he battles the elements. We are grossed out by his attempts to satisfy his hunger and thirst. We wait as eagerly as he does for the sign of approaching help and are as disappointed when days go on without an inch of hope. We are amazed at his sagacity and wisdom as he trains the tiger to listen to him. We are scared to death as he stares at imminent danger from an unpredictable wild creature. We cheer for him as he masters every obstacle. In short, we are with him throughout the journey. And when finally he sights land and the tiger runs into the jungle without so much as a farewell, we are as astonished and saddened as he is.
And then comes the twist in the tale. A doubt is sown in the mind of the reader, and reality and imagination suddenly merge leaving the reader flabbergasted and flummoxed. The author turns the story on its head and sends the reader searching for the truth in the realms of belief and cynicism. I would like to believe, however, that every reader, just like Pi, would end up trusting and accepting what is eventually 'the better story', no matter how incredulous and improbable.
I may not have read many novels in the past few years, but I can safely say that after 'The Kite Runner', the 'Life of Pi' is a book that disturbed me immensely, albeit for different reasons, and definitely not for the puke-worthy scenarios and sentences. My first reaction is the amount of trust and belief that we humans have that makes us believe blindly in what is told or shown to us. In an increasingly cynical world, I still feel that people are willing to believe what is 'the better story' when truth itself is so hard to digest. The book is a tribute to imagination that allows us to create a world that is far away from reality, a reality we do not 'want' to believe. It also showed me that when I believed something utterly, I would reject any other version outright, even if it may be the truth. A lesson for life indeed!
The other thing that stands out in this novel is the propensity of mankind to adapt to every possible situation. The author writes that everything becomes acceptable when one gets habituated to it, whether it is abandoning vegetarianism or even killing. There are no moral questions asked nor answered. It made me wonder to what lengths one would go to if one was trapped in an unforeseen scenario. Having been in the crowded streets in India and also in the sparsely populated streets of America, I still cannot imagine being alone in a vast ocean surrounded only by water. Surely one would die of hopelessness. Therefore, the book is also a testament to man's will and determination to survive against all odds, even if it requires uncharacteristic behaviour.
There are several layers in the book that I might be unable to express here but I would like to think of it as an ode to man's imagination that somehow makes things more beautiful, and life easier to live. Yes, the 'Life of Pi' is so unbelievable that you want to believe in it and accept it whole-heartedly.
 
P.S : In spite of hints of plagiarism that I have no clue about, I deeply admire Yann Martel's research and knowledge of another culture that made me almost wonder if he was Indian!