Life of Pi is a novel about a boy named Pi Patel who is on a journey into an unknown window maligned by a tragic event. Illusions lining light in a meditation of spiritual exploration, he is asking many questions inconclusive of answers. Lost at sea, he is meditating on life’s mysteries, mother, father and brother Ravi, gone as the ship went down in a manmade disaster. He is left alone with a tiger, hyena, zebra and an orangutan to navigate the ocean and battle for survival.
Man is impatient, imitating those who have shown the way ahead. Illusions of many lived experiences have lectured us on making decisions in life’s journey, introducing an expectation of the future. Moments in time can change events to steer us in an unexpected direction without a voice of lived experience to show us the way. We must make choices that can be unfavourable and controversial to the imitators in the moments lived to withstand life’s march in the face of death.
In withstanding this imitation, he must limit his life to man’s expectations of him as a plant eating Hindu, marriage to an approved woman and a faithful family life as a good, hard working man.
With unforeseen events, man is made to manage in other circumstances that are mimicked initially by imitating another man, then, as minimally mastered, he takes his own path to survival. In time, he is mimicked by others as his path is mastered and is known by telling his story to the world. It is a path less travelled a million times over, but rarely believed or survived without witness.
One must make decisions in adverse circumstances waiting for rescue or land to save him, listless on a boat in the Pacific Ocean, he listens to his inner voice. His faith in God is his saviour, lifting him above the waves and carrying him back to civilization. Maligned by loss, but not alone, he is accompanied by a tiger, mimed by man, by his name and a reflection of himself, Richard Parker is his friend and mentor, a voice in the dark and most importantly a spiritual guide in a voyage of survival and a lesson in life that affects us all. Imagination can move mountains and carve a path to freedom and another chance in life’s journey.
Pi Patel reminds me of myself, miming others in an attempt to fit into a world that is pre-ordained and managed for us, without answers to life’s questions to take us forward into the unknown, masking us from a greater knowledge of the universal spirit.
