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Literary Review
Creative confusion
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In spite of the fact that the narrative should have been 80-100 pages shorter, one gets rather fond of Pi, the plucky, innovative and forever hopeful survivor, says ZAHIDA WHITAKER.
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PISCINE MOLITOR PATEL is a name to warm every schoolboy's creative and sadistic talents. Pissing Patel is of course what it quickly evolves to. In a fine burst of self-preservation, Piscine announces himself as Pi (as in 3.14) on his first day at his new school, and changes his fate. "And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge."
Clutching his new, usable name, Pi begins to Explore the World and starts a surrealistic, allegorical, magic-realist journey which could/ should have been a good 80-100 pages shorter. The editor's knife hasn't pruned, chopped and shaved where it should have.
But in spite of my irritation with the length, I didn't dare skip pages because Yann Martel has a habit of throwing out gems of narrative and pearls of humour you can't afford to miss. No wonder he is a professional India-traveller. Our creative confusion must have been his food and drink.
The story begins, and in a sense ends, in Pondicherry. (That is, if you look at it a certain way; in others, it perhaps ends in Toronto, or Mexico, even Heaven.) Pi's father has a zoo in Pondicherry and there is much lively pontification about zoos. "I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about god and religion. Well meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are `happy' because they are `free'. These people usually have a large, handsome predator in mind, a lion or a cheetah (the life of a gnu or an aardvark are rarely exalted). They imagine this wild animal roaming about the savannah on digestive walks after eating a prey that accepted its lot piously, or going on callisthenic tunes to stay slim after overindulging... This is not the way it is."
Leaving his tigers and lions aside for a while, Pi begins to explore religion and becomes a Hindu with marked Christian and Muslim leanings. His parents tolerate the sudden plunge into secularism with helpless concern. He evaluates Jesus against the backdrop of the colourful and spunky Hindu pantheon: "Even Rama, that most human of avatars, who had to be reminded of his divinity when he grew long-faced over the struggle to get Sita... was no slouch. No spindly cross would have kept him down. When push came to shove he transcended his limited human frame with strength that no man could have and weapons no man could handle."
Pi's next challenge is that his family emigrates to Canada, leaving Madras on the Panamanian-registered Japanese cargo ship Tsimstum, with a host of animals destined for zoos abroad including zebras, bisons, hyenas, and a tiger called Richard Parker. The latter becomes Pi's nemesis in the ensuing adventures.
Panamanian-registered ships often have weak floating skills, and this one sinks ("with a metallic burp") taking Pi's family to the bottom of the sea. Pi survives seven months at sea on a lifeboat, with R. Parker for company.
What exactly Yann Martel tries to do in this prolonged survival-on-the-lifeboat narrative is not clear. There are shadowy elements, as I said before, of magic realism and allegory but one is never quite sure and neither, it seems, is Martel. It doesn't really matter. One can read this book with an "open mind": categorising is passé anyway.
The lifeboat is also occupied by a zebra, an orang-utan, and a hyena; the hyena eats the zebra alive for several pages, making the strongest literary stomach turn. "It started pulling out coils of intestines and other viscera... it plunged head and shoulders into the zebra's guts, up to the knees of its front legs... the zebra was being eaten alive from the inside."
After months of eating raw fish, facing thirst, sharks, and other terrors, Pi finds himself on an island — yahoo! But... it has carnivorous trees and the remnants of human teeth enfolded in its leaves indicate a quick departure is required. I hope I haven't misunderstood, but I have the feeling Pi finally ends up in Toronto with a cosy family and south Indian curries. If I have misunderstood, we'll leave it that way because I couldn't bear it if that weren't true. One gets rather fond of this plucky, innovative and forever hopeful little survivor. My own trials in life stand forever diminished.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Penguin India, Rs 295.
(Life of Pi has been included in the just-announced Booker Prize longlist.)
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