I have read this novel twice. Once when I visited Erin & Pavan in 2002 and secondly this month in 2010. But felt immense pleasure re-reading too. Erin loved the novel and referred it to me. I too made a chain of readers based on my likeness & instead they loved the book too.
Piscine Molitor Patel: this name seems to be a quite unusual name..doesn't it?....He got this name from his father who named him after a swimming pool..as he was a great fan of that pool and passionate about swimming. Pi as he was later called by his family and friends had a hard time renaming himself to PI..as the no>>3.14...pi in geometry. There are funny instances where he is also nicknamed as pissing..:-)..Poor Pi had a good struggle in getting a fair amount of justice to his unique name.
His family owned a Zoo in Pondicheery. Pi grew up with a parents and elder brother Ravi. As a youngster Pi grew up amongst animals and had reasonable knowledge about the wild. For some reasons his father had to sell off his Zoo and shift to Canada. The story begins when Pi and his family starts their journey to Canada on a Ship called Tsimtsum with a few animals on board too. This ship sank and Pi was the only survivor. He was a castaway for 227 days and his only friends were water,aquatic environment, Richard Parker and Sun.
The sinking of the ship leaves pi with options of living with an animal on board or just waiting to die. He keeps remembering, Vishnu, Allah and Jesus. Living in the wild made him wild enough to catch sea turtles and flying fish to satisfy his appetite. There many interesting things about what to do and what not to do if you are sea struck and have to live alone out in the sea. The survival manual included:
* Do not drink urine or sea water or bird blood.
8 Do not eat jelly fish or any spiked fish.
* Do not unnecessarily exert.
*Sea turtles are an excellent source of a wholesome meal.
Do not loose hope!
The end of the books entails how Pi makes up two stories about his survival. The one with Richard Parker(A Bengal tiger),orangutan, hyena & Zebra...and one with himself, mother, sailor and the cook. Its amazing to read how both the stories are related. Pi is sad to say Good Bye to Richard Parker his only friend and buddy. When Pi is rescued from the lifeboat in Canada, 2 Japanese investigators unveil the truth as in what really happened on the ship and how Pi and Richard Parker survived.
Reading this book also reminds me of the movie The Castaway and The Big Fish. Those who have like The Life Of Pi...Will also like these two movies. When I suggested this book to Manish he was happy to read and blog about it amazingly.
You can reach his blog at-->
http://paanchfarzi.blogspot.com/2008/09/amazing-piece-of-imagination-by-yann.html
