Yann Martel: Life of Pi

I spent my last year at St. Joseph’s School feeling like the persecuted prophet Muhammad in Mecca, peace be upon him. But just as he planned his flight to Medina, the Hejira that would mark the beginning of Muslim time, I planned my escape and the beginning of a new time for me.

After St. Joseph’s, I went to Petit Séminaire, the best private English-medium secondary school in Pondicherry. Ravi was already there, and like all younger brothers, I would suffer from following in the footsteps of a popular older sibling. He was the athlete of his generation at Petit Séminaire, a fearsome bowler and a powerful batter, the captain of the town’s best cricket team, our very own Kapil Dev. That I was a swimmer made no waves; it seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers. But following in someone’s shadow wasn’t my escape, though I would have taken any name over “Pissing”, even “Ravi’s brother”. I had a better plan than that.

I put it to execution on the very first day of school, in the very first class. Around me were other alumni of St. Joseph’s. The class started the way all new classes start, with the stating of names. We called them out from our desks in the order in which we happened to be sitting.

“Ganapathy Kumar,” said Ganapathy Kumar.

“Vipin Nath,” said Vipin Nath.

“Shamshool Hudha,” said Shamshool Hudha.

“Peter Dharmaraj,” said Peter Dharmaraj.

Each name elicited a tick on a list and a brief mnemonic stare from the teacher. I was terribly nervous.

“Ajith Giadson,” said Ajith Giadson, four desks away …

“Sampath Saroja,” said Sampath Saroja, three away …

“Stanley Kumar,” said Stanley Kumar, two away …

“Sylvester Naveen,” said Sylvester Naveen, right in front of me.

It was my turn. Time to put down Satan. Medina, here I come.

I got up from my desk and hurried to the blackboard. Before the teacher could say a word, I picked up a piece of chalk and said as I wrote:

My name is

Piscine Molitor Patel ,

known to all as

—I double underlined the first two letters of my given name—

Pi Patel

For good measure I added

π= 3.14

and I drew a large circle, which I then sliced in two with a diameter, to evoke that basic lesson of geometry.

There was silence. The teacher was staring at the board. I was holding my breath. Then he said, “Very well, Pi. Sit down. Next time you will ask permission before leaving your desk.”

“Yes, sir.”

He ticked my name off. And looked at the next boy.

“Mansoor Ahamad,” said Mansoor Ahamad.

I was saved.

“Gautham Selvaraj,” said Gautham Selvaraj.

I could breathe.

“Arun Annaji,” said Arun Annaji.

A new beginning.

I repeated the stunt with every teacher. Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans. Between one commonly named boy and the next, I rushed forward and emblazoned, sometimes with a terrible screech, the details of my rebirth. It got to be that after a few times the boys sang along with me, a crescendo that climaxed, after a quick intake of air while I underlined the proper note, with such a rousing rendition of my new name that it would have been the delight of any choirmaster. A few boys followed up with a whispered, urgent “Three! Point! One! Four!” as I wrote as fast as I could, and I ended the concert by slicing the circle with such vigour that bits of chalk went flying.

When I put my hand up that day, which I did every chance I had, teachers granted me the right to speak with a single syllable that was music to my ears. Students followed suit. Even the St. Joseph’s devils. In fact, the name caught on. Truly we are a nation of aspiring engineers: shortly after, there was a boy named Omprakash who was calling himself Omega, and another who was passing himself off as Upsilon, and for a while there was a Gamma, a Lambda and a Delta. But I was the first and the most enduring of the Greeks at Petit Séminaire. Even my brother, the captain of the cricket team, that local god, approved. He took me aside the next week.

“What’s this I hear about a nickname you have?” he said.

I kept silent. Because whatever mocking was to come, it was to come. There was no avoiding it.

“I didn’t realize you liked the colour yellow so much.”

The colour yellow? I looked around. No one must hear what he was about to say, especially not one of his lackeys. “Ravi, what do you mean?” I whispered.

“It’s all right with me, brother. Anything’s better than ‘Pissing’. Even ‘Lemon Pie’.”

As he sauntered away he smiled and said, “You look a bit red in the face.”

But he held his peace.

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.

He’s an excellent cook. His overheated house is always smelling of something delicious. His spice rack looks like an apothecary’s shop. When he opens his refrigerator or his cupboards, there are many brand names I don’t recognize; in fact, I can’t even tell what language they’re in. We are in India. But he handles Western dishes equally well. He makes me the most zesty yet subtle macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had. And his vegetarian tacos would be the envy of all Mexico .

I notice something else: his cupboards are jam-packed. Behind every door, on every shelf, stand mountains of neatly stacked cans and packages. A reserve of food to last the siege of Leningrad .

It was my luck to have a few good teachers in my youth, men and women who came into my dark head and lit a match. One of these was Mr. Satish Kumar, my biology teacher at Petit Séminaire and an active Communist who was always hoping Tamil Nadu would stop electing movie stars and go the way of Kerala. He had a most peculiar appearance. The top of his head was bald and pointy, yet he had the most impressive jowls I have ever seen, and his narrow shoulders gave way to a massive stomach that looked like the base of a mountain, except that the mountain stood in thin air, for it stopped abruptly and disappeared horizontally into his pants. It’s a mystery to me how his stick-like legs supported the weight above them, but they did, though they moved in surprising ways at times, as if his knees could bend in any direction. His construction was geometric: he looked like two triangles, a small one and a larger one, balanced on two parallel lines. But organic, quite warty actually, and with sprigs of black hair sticking out of his ears. And friendly. His smile seemed to take up the whole base of his triangular head.

Mr. Kumar was the first avowed atheist I ever met. I discovered this not in the classroom but at the zoo. He was a regular visitor who read the labels and descriptive notices in their entirety and approved of every animal he saw. Each to him was a triumph of logic and mechanics, and nature as a whole was an exceptionally fine illustration of science. To his ears, when an animal felt the urge to mate, it said “Gregor Mendel”, recalling the father of genetics, and when it was time to show its mettle, “Charles Darwin”, the father of natural selection, and what we took to be bleating, grunting, hissing, snorting, roaring, growling, howling, chirping and screeching were but the thick accents of foreigners. When Mr. Kumar visited the zoo, it was to take the pulse of the universe, and his stethoscopic mind always confirmed to him that everything was in order, that everything was order. He left the zoo feeling scientifically refreshed.