Tales of Pi # 11

Yann Martel has dedicated one whole chapter to the story of Francis Adirubasamy aka Mamaji.  The life of Mamaji is an inspiring one. A free-spirited person who did his studies in Paris in a time ‘’when the French were still trying to make Pondicherry as Gallicas the British were trying to make the rest of the India Britannic’’(P#10). The character of Mamaji has a Ulyssean feature to it. ‘Mamaji was a champion competitive swimmer, the champion of all South India. Even in his sixties, when he was little stooped, Mamaji swam thirty lengths every morning at the pool of the Aurobindo Ashram’. Mamaji was a great teacher. He tried teaching Pi’s parents the art of swimming but he was unsuccessful in that. Even Pi’s brother was ‘unenthusiastic’. Like the Zen Koan saying – When the teacher is ready, the student will appear, Pi appeared as the perfect disciple. The relationship between Pi and Mamaji is a beautiful one. The day Pi appears on the beach to learn swimming Mamaji tells him - ‘This is my gift to you’. A gift which later saves Pi from the shipwreck. Water is a powerful symbol in Life of Pi. It destroys and preserves like the West Wind. Pi talks about his teacher as a ‘patient and encouraging’ one. He ‘remained faithful to his aquatic guru’. Apart from being a swimming champion, Mamaji was also a great story teller. (Story telling is one of the central themes of the novel) ‘All his stories had to do with swimming pools and swimming competitions’. One of his favourite hobbies was to recall the details about the different pools from around the world.  His passionate and endless talk reminds me of the character in Forest Gump (authored by Winston Groom) known as Bubba Blue who continuously talks about shrimps. Mamaji and Bubba Blue shared a common trait – They were passionate about what they did and loved in life. The chapter ends with a beautiful one liner – ‘Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed’, which neatly summarizes the difference between doing and dreaming. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953)

Tales of Pi # 10

Richard Parker is introduced for the first time through these words. The Royal Bengal Tiger is an enigma because he is a symbol. When the Japanese shipping officials were asked the question Which Tale do you believe? ‘One with the human beings’ or the ‘One with the animals’, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba replies “Yes, the story with animals is a better story”. Life of Pi is not just one story or a tale. It is a collection of tales in the mind of the reader based on the understanding of the novel. What does Richard Parker ultimately refer to? He is the only animal in the story who has a human name. Other animals have pet names like Orange Juice. The story of Pi and Richard Parker is the story of the human soul and the human mind lost in the ocean of life. Pi (3.14) is a transcendental number just like human soul or ‘atman’. The soul exists outside of time and the lifetime of our current personality. Our bodies end but our souls never end. The soul has its own natural state of love, compassion, and clarity. Richard Parker represents the human mind which should always be kept under control. How the soul and the mind co-exist creating a wonderful amalgamation is the crux of the novel. The mind should never dominate the soul. If that happens then there is total ruin. It will be a soulless world devoid of any meaning or spirituality. When the human mind gets corrupted the true essence is lost. Pi is in total control of his own essence and Richard Parker is tamed and conquered. 

The same meaning is echoed in the lines of W.B Yeats when he says 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/what-is-soul-or-atma

http://paultkidd.blogspot.com/2013/09/interpreting-meaning-of-richard-parker.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Tales of Pi # 9

This part of the novel examines the connections between life and death. A theme that is explored in great detail by many authors in literature. Even the image of the skull reminds one of the skull in Hamlet which can also be interpreted as a reminder to the world that death is an inevitable reality. The classic posture of Hamlet looking at the empty eyes of the skull is another symbolic way of telling the audience that death is a fast approaching reality. ‘The skull itself is a physical reminder of the finality of death’. The famous painting by the Dutch Post Impressionist artist, Vincent van Gogh depicts sunflowers at the height of their beauty. Cut off from their stems and placed in a vase, we experience their last burst of vitality as they begin to wilt in various stages of decomposition as captured in this painting. Recently I watched this movie Bohemian Rhapsody (the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time) which is a biopic of Freddie Mercury who was the lead singer of Queen. Freddie Mercury died at the age of 45 due to AIDS. The band is famous for the anthem like songs like – We will Rock you, We are the champions, Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody. (Will do a post soon on the Magic of Freddie Mercury) Freddie Mercury’s songs have references on life and death. Sample this lyric.

Too late, my time has come

Sends shivers down my spine

Body's aching all the time

Goodbye everybody I've got to go

Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth

Mama, oh oh (anyway the wind blows)

I don't want to die

Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

The mori painting (grinning skull) that Pi refers to in his life is a power Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses (I found one in a Pizza Hut outlet) or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers. A memento mori is an artwork designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the shortness and fragility of human life. But Pi is not ready to surrender before death. He says “You may not believe in Life, but I don’t believe in Death. Move on”. The reader is now aware that Pi has transcended the gloominess and sadness that he had experienced earlier. He says “gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud” which is comes after one of the beautiful descriptions about life and death – ‘Life is so beautiful that death had fallen in love with it’. Would like to end this post with the lyrics of the song – We are the Champions by Queen 

I've taken my bows

And my curtain calls

You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it

I thank you all

But it's been no bed of roses

No pleasure cruise

I consider it a challenge before the whole human race

And I ain't gonna lose

We are the champions, my friends

And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end

We are the champions

We are the champions

No time for losers

'Cause we are the champions of the world

Tales of Pi # 8

Pi admits that he came out of his ‘gloomy and sad state’ by devoting himself to the study of religion and zoology. Both of these subjects play a dominant role in his life. He gives the reasons why he chose the sloth as the subject of his zoological study. Sloths are ‘calm, quiet and introspective’. Yann Martel then embarks on a journey to describe the sloths in detail. My above post talks about one member in RR who is a keen observer of nature. I think that’s one thing we all miss in our lives. To stop and gaze at the world passing by. There is one similarity between Yann Martel’s life when he visited India and Pi’s life in Canada – both of them had a ‘shattered self’. With one failed book behind him, Martel – then merely an aspiring writer – spent six months in south India in 1996. He visited Trivandrum Zoo, where he interviewed its director, observed the tigers, and ate French toast in the Indian Coffee House just across the road. The Life of Pi started to emerge in a “smashed up, kaleidoscopic” way.                                        

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/29/india.bookerprize2002 As we listen to the soul-stirring OST of Mychael Danna, we feel the slowness of life. Pi quoting a zoologist writes that the sloths reminded him of the ‘upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing’(P#5). It is quite unfortunate that in the movie Zootopia, the sloth is made a butt of ridicule and it contradicts the notes on sloth by Pi. ‘The three-toed sloth lives in a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips’’ (P# 4)

Name and the Named

The discussion on Anton Chekov in RR, made me do a minor research on the surname Chekhov. It is a well-known fact that Salman Rushdie throughout his post-fatwa life adopted a pseudo name. It is a historical irony that Rushdie received the life-changing call from a BBC journalist on the Valentine’s day in the year 1989. The hatred had its epicenter in the Iranian theocracy. Rushdie was immediately asked to invent a new avatar or an alias and as a fan boy of both Chekhov and Conrad, the name that came into his mind was Joseph Anton. He describes them as his ‘godfathers’ and he was greatly influenced by this quote from Joseph Conrad “I must live until I die, mustn’t I?” Salman Rushdie didn’t stop there. ‘Chekhov and Zulu’ is the name of the short story in the collection titled – East, West, where the themes are drawn from his life as Joseph Anton. The story is about two friends with codenames Pavel Chekhov and Hikaru Sulu who are entrusted with a mission to collect intelligence on radical Sikhs in Britain following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Pavel Chekhov is also the name of the character in the Start Trek series and it was played by an actor by the name Anton Yelchin from 2009-2016. 

The act of naming has become quite rampant these days. I would like to pinpoint two instances where names where changed due to some political drama. President Trump referred to Tim Cook as Tim Apple during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. The Apple CEO has replaced his last name with Apple logo on his twitter profile. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cortège renamed their twitter handle to Chowkidar Narendra Modi in an attempt to thwart the opposition jibe based on the name ‘chor’.

Just few days back, I came upon this interesting thread of exchanges in Twitter which appeared in the timeline of my favorite author – Manu S Pillai. 

What's your name?"

"Manu"

"I mean your full name."

"Manu"

"Arey your school name?"

"Manu"

"Is it short for something?"

Out of sheer frustration:

"Yes, Manmohan."

The excitement reached its pinnacle when our old RRian and MCCian P J George of the Hindu shared his version of it. 

What's your name?

- George

- But what's your Indian name?

- George

- No, what do they call you in India?

- E M S Namboothirippad

- Ah, so George...

My first name had many versions in different places that I have worked. In North Africa and the Middle-East they called me as Bremjith due to their issues with the plosives. In Thailand, they called me Plemjith due to their problems with approximant consonants.