Yann Martel: Life of Pi
life of pi
A NOVEL
author's note
This book was born as I was hungry. Let me explain. In the spring of 1996, my second book, a novel, came
out in Canada. It didn't fare well. Reviewers were puzzled, or damned it with faint praise. Then readers
ignored it. Despite my best efforts at playing the clown or the trapeze artist, the media circus made no
difference. The book did not move. Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play
baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team. It vanished
quickly and quietly.
The fiasco did not affect me too much. I had already moved on to another story, a novel set in Portugal in
1939. Only I was feeling restless. And I had a little money.
So I flew to Bombay. This is not so illogical if you realize three things: that a stint in India will beat the
restlessness out of any living creature; that a little money can go a long way there; and that a novel set in
Portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with Portugal in 1939.
I had been to India before, in the north, for five months. On that first trip I had come to the subcontinent
completely unprepared. Actually, I had a preparation of one word. When I told a friend who knew the country
well of my travel plans, he said casually, "They speak a funny English in India. They like words like
bamboozle." I remembered his words as my plane started its descent towards Delhi, so the word bamboozle
was my one preparation for the rich, noisy, functioning madness of India. I used the word on occasion, and
truth be told, it served me well. To a clerk at a train station I said, "I didn't think the fare would be so
expensive. You're not trying to bamboozle me, are you?" He smiled and chanted, "No sir! There is no
bamboozlement here. I have quoted you the correct fare."
This second time to India I knew better what to expect and I knew what I wanted: I would settle in a hill
station and write my novel. I had visions of myself sitting at a table on a large veranda, my notes spread out in
front of me next to a steaming cup of tea. Green hills heavy with mists would lie at my feet and the shrill cries
of monkeys would fill my ears. The weather would be just right, requiring a light sweater mornings and
evenings, and something short-sleeved midday. Thus set up, pen in hand, for the sake of greater truth, I would
turn Portugal into a fiction. That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The
twisting of it to bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal?
The lady who ran the place would tell me stories about the struggle to boot the British out. We would agree on
what I was to have for lunch and supper the next day. After my writing day was over, I would go for walks in
the rolling hills of the tea estates.
Unfortunately, the novel sputtered, coughed and died. It happened in Matheran, not far from Bombay, a small
hill station with some monkeys but no tea estates. It's a misery peculiar to would-be writers. Your theme is
good, as are your sentences. Your characters are so ruddy with life they practically need birth certificates. The
plot you've mapped out for them is grand, simple and gripping. You've done your research, gathering the
facts-historical, social, climatic, culinary-that will give your story its feel of authenticity. The dialogue zips
along, crackling with tension. The descriptions burst with colour, contrast and telling detail. Really, your story
can only be great. But it all adds up to nothing. In spite of the obvious, shining promise of it, there comes a
moment when you realize that the whisper that has been pestering you all along from the back of your mind is
speaking the flat, awful truth: it won't work. An element is missing, that spark that brings to life a real story,
Page 1
, Yann Martel: Life of Pi
regardless of whether the history or the food is right. Your story is emotionally dead, that's the crux of it. The
discovery is something soul-destroying, I tell you. It leaves you with an aching hunger.
From Matheran I mailed the notes of my failed novel. I mailed them to a fictitious address in Siberia, with a
return address, equally fictitious, in Bolivia. After the clerk had stamped the envelope and thrown it into a
sorting bin, I sat down, glum and disheartened. "What now, Tolstoy? What other bright ideas do you have for
your life?" I asked myself.
Well, I still had a little money and I was still feeling restless. I got up and walked out of the post office to
explore the south of India.
I would have liked to say, "I'm a doctor," to those who asked me what I did, doctors being the current
purveyors of magic and miracle. But I'm sure we would have had a bus accident around the next bend, and
with all eyes fixed on me I would have to explain, amidst the crying and moaning of victims, that I meant in
law; then, to their appeal to help them sue the government over the mishap, I would have to confess that as a
matter of fact it was a Bachelor's in philosophy; next, to the shouts of what meaning such a bloody tragedy
could have, I would have to admit that I had hardly touched Kierkegaard; and so on. I stuck to the humble,
bruised truth.
Along the way, here and there, I got the response, "A writer? Is that so? I have a story for you." Most times the
stories were little more than anecdotes, short of breath and short of life.
I arrived in the town of Pondicherry, a tiny self-governing Union Territory south of Madras, on the coast of
Tamil Nadu. In population and size it is an inconsequent part of India-by comparison, Prince Edward Island is
a giant within Canada-but history has set it apart. For Pondicherry was once the capital of that most modest of
colonial empires, French India. The French would have liked to rival the British, very much so, but the only
Raj they managed to get was a handful of small ports. They clung to these for nearly three hundred years.
They left Pondicherry in 1954, leaving behind nice white buildings, broad streets at right angles to each other,
street names such as rue de la Marine and rue Saint-Louis, and kepis, caps, for the policemen.
I was at the Indian Coffee House, on Nehru Street. It's one big room with green walls and a high ceiling. Fans
whirl above you to keep the warm, humid air moving. The place is furnished to capacity with identical square
tables, each with its complement of four chairs. You sit where you can, with whoever is at a table. The coffee
is good and they serve French toast. Conversation is easy to come by. And so, a spry, bright-eyed elderly man
with great shocks of pure white hair was talking to me. I confirmed to him that Canada was cold and that
French was indeed spoken in parts of it and that I liked India and so on and so forth-the usual light talk
between friendly, curious Indians and foreign backpackers. He took in my line of work with a widening of the
eyes and a nodding of the head. It was time to go. I had my hand up, trying to catch my waiter's eye to get the
bill.
Then the elderly man said, "I have a story that will make you believe in God."
I stopped waving my hand. But I was suspicious. Was this a Jehovah's Witness knocking at my door? "Does
your story take place two thousand years ago in a remote corner of the Roman Empire?" I asked.
"No."
Was he some sort of Muslim evangelist? "Does it take place in seventh-century Arabia?"
"No, no. It starts right here in Pondicherry just a few years back, and it ends, I am delighted to tell you, in the
very country you come from."
Page 2
, Yann Martel: Life of Pi
"And it will make me believe in God?"
"Yes."
"That's a tall order."
"Not so tall that you can't reach."
My waiter appeared. I hesitated for a moment. I ordered two coffees. We introduced ourselves. His name was
Francis Adirubasamy. "Please tell me your story," I said.
"You must pay proper attention," he replied.
"I will." I brought out pen and notepad.
"Tell me, have you been to the botanical garden?" he asked.
"I went yesterday."
"Did you notice the toy train tracks?"
"Yes, I did"
"A train still runs on Sundays for the amusement of the children. But it used to run twice an hour every day.
Did you take note of the names of the stations?"
"One is called Roseville. It's right next to the rose garden."
"That's right. And the other?"
"I don't remember."
"The sign was taken down. The other station was once called Zootown. The toy train had two stops: Roseville
and Zootown. Once upon a time there was a zoo in the Pondicherry Botanical Garden."
He went on. I took notes, the elements of the story. "You must talk to him," he said, of the main character. "I
knew him very, very well. He's a grown man now. You must ask him all the questions you want."
Later, in Toronto, among nine columns of Patels in the phone book, I found him, the main character. My heart
pounded as I dialed his phone number. The voice that answered had an Indian lilt to its Canadian accent, light
but unmistakable, like a trace of incense in the air. "That was a very long time ago," he said. Yet he agreed to
meet. We met many times. He showed me the diary he kept during the events. He showed me the yellowed
newspaper clippings that made him briefly, obscurely famous. He told me his story. All the while I took notes.
Nearly a year later, after considerable difficulties, I received a tape and a report from the Japanese Ministry of
Transport. It was as I listened to that tape that I agreed with Mr. Adirubasamy that this was, indeed, a story to
make you believe in God.
It seemed natural that Mr. Patel's story should be told mostly in the first person, in his voice and through his
eyes. But any inaccuracies or mistakes are mine.
I have a few people to thank. I am most obviously indebted to Mr. Patel. My gratitude to him is as boundless
Page 3
, Yann Martel: Life of Pi
as the Pacific Ocean and I hope that my telling of his tale does not disappoint him. For getting me started on
the story, I have Mr. Adirubasamy to thank. For helping me complete it, I am grateful to three officials of
exemplary professionalism: Mr. Kazuhiko Oda, lately of the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa; Mr. Hiroshi
Watanabe, of Oika Shipping Company; and, especially, Mr. Tomohiro Okamoto, of the Japanese Ministry of
Transport, now retired. As for the spark of life, I owe it to Mr. Moacyr Scliar. Lastly, I would like to express
my sincere gratitude to that great institution, the Canada Council for the Arts, without whose grant I could not
have brought together this story that has nothing to do with Portugal in 1939. If we, citizens, do not support
our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing
and having worthless dreams.
PART ONE
Toronto and Pondicherry
CHAPTER I
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly wrought me back to life. I have kept up
with what some people would consider my strange religious practices. After one year of high school, I
attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious
studies and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony
theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My zoology thesis was a functional
analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour-calm, quiet and
introspective-did something to soothe my shattered self.
There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the case being determined by the forepaws of the
animals, since all sloths have three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck one summer of studying the
three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only real habit is
indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hours a day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild
three-toed sloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after they had fallen asleep, bright red plastic
dishes filled with water. We found them still in place late the next morning, the water of the dishes swarming
with insects. The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in the most relaxed sense. It moves
along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour.
On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times
slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour.
The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents
unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloths senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing
a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two
or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it
should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. As for hearing, the sloth is
not so much deaf as uninterested in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths
elicited little reaction. And the sloth's slightly better sense of smell should not be overestimated. They are said
Page 4
life of pi
A NOVEL
author's note
This book was born as I was hungry. Let me explain. In the spring of 1996, my second book, a novel, came
out in Canada. It didn't fare well. Reviewers were puzzled, or damned it with faint praise. Then readers
ignored it. Despite my best efforts at playing the clown or the trapeze artist, the media circus made no
difference. The book did not move. Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play
baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team. It vanished
quickly and quietly.
The fiasco did not affect me too much. I had already moved on to another story, a novel set in Portugal in
1939. Only I was feeling restless. And I had a little money.
So I flew to Bombay. This is not so illogical if you realize three things: that a stint in India will beat the
restlessness out of any living creature; that a little money can go a long way there; and that a novel set in
Portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with Portugal in 1939.
I had been to India before, in the north, for five months. On that first trip I had come to the subcontinent
completely unprepared. Actually, I had a preparation of one word. When I told a friend who knew the country
well of my travel plans, he said casually, "They speak a funny English in India. They like words like
bamboozle." I remembered his words as my plane started its descent towards Delhi, so the word bamboozle
was my one preparation for the rich, noisy, functioning madness of India. I used the word on occasion, and
truth be told, it served me well. To a clerk at a train station I said, "I didn't think the fare would be so
expensive. You're not trying to bamboozle me, are you?" He smiled and chanted, "No sir! There is no
bamboozlement here. I have quoted you the correct fare."
This second time to India I knew better what to expect and I knew what I wanted: I would settle in a hill
station and write my novel. I had visions of myself sitting at a table on a large veranda, my notes spread out in
front of me next to a steaming cup of tea. Green hills heavy with mists would lie at my feet and the shrill cries
of monkeys would fill my ears. The weather would be just right, requiring a light sweater mornings and
evenings, and something short-sleeved midday. Thus set up, pen in hand, for the sake of greater truth, I would
turn Portugal into a fiction. That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The
twisting of it to bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal?
The lady who ran the place would tell me stories about the struggle to boot the British out. We would agree on
what I was to have for lunch and supper the next day. After my writing day was over, I would go for walks in
the rolling hills of the tea estates.
Unfortunately, the novel sputtered, coughed and died. It happened in Matheran, not far from Bombay, a small
hill station with some monkeys but no tea estates. It's a misery peculiar to would-be writers. Your theme is
good, as are your sentences. Your characters are so ruddy with life they practically need birth certificates. The
plot you've mapped out for them is grand, simple and gripping. You've done your research, gathering the
facts-historical, social, climatic, culinary-that will give your story its feel of authenticity. The dialogue zips
along, crackling with tension. The descriptions burst with colour, contrast and telling detail. Really, your story
can only be great. But it all adds up to nothing. In spite of the obvious, shining promise of it, there comes a
moment when you realize that the whisper that has been pestering you all along from the back of your mind is
speaking the flat, awful truth: it won't work. An element is missing, that spark that brings to life a real story,
Page 1
, Yann Martel: Life of Pi
regardless of whether the history or the food is right. Your story is emotionally dead, that's the crux of it. The
discovery is something soul-destroying, I tell you. It leaves you with an aching hunger.
From Matheran I mailed the notes of my failed novel. I mailed them to a fictitious address in Siberia, with a
return address, equally fictitious, in Bolivia. After the clerk had stamped the envelope and thrown it into a
sorting bin, I sat down, glum and disheartened. "What now, Tolstoy? What other bright ideas do you have for
your life?" I asked myself.
Well, I still had a little money and I was still feeling restless. I got up and walked out of the post office to
explore the south of India.
I would have liked to say, "I'm a doctor," to those who asked me what I did, doctors being the current
purveyors of magic and miracle. But I'm sure we would have had a bus accident around the next bend, and
with all eyes fixed on me I would have to explain, amidst the crying and moaning of victims, that I meant in
law; then, to their appeal to help them sue the government over the mishap, I would have to confess that as a
matter of fact it was a Bachelor's in philosophy; next, to the shouts of what meaning such a bloody tragedy
could have, I would have to admit that I had hardly touched Kierkegaard; and so on. I stuck to the humble,
bruised truth.
Along the way, here and there, I got the response, "A writer? Is that so? I have a story for you." Most times the
stories were little more than anecdotes, short of breath and short of life.
I arrived in the town of Pondicherry, a tiny self-governing Union Territory south of Madras, on the coast of
Tamil Nadu. In population and size it is an inconsequent part of India-by comparison, Prince Edward Island is
a giant within Canada-but history has set it apart. For Pondicherry was once the capital of that most modest of
colonial empires, French India. The French would have liked to rival the British, very much so, but the only
Raj they managed to get was a handful of small ports. They clung to these for nearly three hundred years.
They left Pondicherry in 1954, leaving behind nice white buildings, broad streets at right angles to each other,
street names such as rue de la Marine and rue Saint-Louis, and kepis, caps, for the policemen.
I was at the Indian Coffee House, on Nehru Street. It's one big room with green walls and a high ceiling. Fans
whirl above you to keep the warm, humid air moving. The place is furnished to capacity with identical square
tables, each with its complement of four chairs. You sit where you can, with whoever is at a table. The coffee
is good and they serve French toast. Conversation is easy to come by. And so, a spry, bright-eyed elderly man
with great shocks of pure white hair was talking to me. I confirmed to him that Canada was cold and that
French was indeed spoken in parts of it and that I liked India and so on and so forth-the usual light talk
between friendly, curious Indians and foreign backpackers. He took in my line of work with a widening of the
eyes and a nodding of the head. It was time to go. I had my hand up, trying to catch my waiter's eye to get the
bill.
Then the elderly man said, "I have a story that will make you believe in God."
I stopped waving my hand. But I was suspicious. Was this a Jehovah's Witness knocking at my door? "Does
your story take place two thousand years ago in a remote corner of the Roman Empire?" I asked.
"No."
Was he some sort of Muslim evangelist? "Does it take place in seventh-century Arabia?"
"No, no. It starts right here in Pondicherry just a few years back, and it ends, I am delighted to tell you, in the
very country you come from."
Page 2
, Yann Martel: Life of Pi
"And it will make me believe in God?"
"Yes."
"That's a tall order."
"Not so tall that you can't reach."
My waiter appeared. I hesitated for a moment. I ordered two coffees. We introduced ourselves. His name was
Francis Adirubasamy. "Please tell me your story," I said.
"You must pay proper attention," he replied.
"I will." I brought out pen and notepad.
"Tell me, have you been to the botanical garden?" he asked.
"I went yesterday."
"Did you notice the toy train tracks?"
"Yes, I did"
"A train still runs on Sundays for the amusement of the children. But it used to run twice an hour every day.
Did you take note of the names of the stations?"
"One is called Roseville. It's right next to the rose garden."
"That's right. And the other?"
"I don't remember."
"The sign was taken down. The other station was once called Zootown. The toy train had two stops: Roseville
and Zootown. Once upon a time there was a zoo in the Pondicherry Botanical Garden."
He went on. I took notes, the elements of the story. "You must talk to him," he said, of the main character. "I
knew him very, very well. He's a grown man now. You must ask him all the questions you want."
Later, in Toronto, among nine columns of Patels in the phone book, I found him, the main character. My heart
pounded as I dialed his phone number. The voice that answered had an Indian lilt to its Canadian accent, light
but unmistakable, like a trace of incense in the air. "That was a very long time ago," he said. Yet he agreed to
meet. We met many times. He showed me the diary he kept during the events. He showed me the yellowed
newspaper clippings that made him briefly, obscurely famous. He told me his story. All the while I took notes.
Nearly a year later, after considerable difficulties, I received a tape and a report from the Japanese Ministry of
Transport. It was as I listened to that tape that I agreed with Mr. Adirubasamy that this was, indeed, a story to
make you believe in God.
It seemed natural that Mr. Patel's story should be told mostly in the first person, in his voice and through his
eyes. But any inaccuracies or mistakes are mine.
I have a few people to thank. I am most obviously indebted to Mr. Patel. My gratitude to him is as boundless
Page 3
, Yann Martel: Life of Pi
as the Pacific Ocean and I hope that my telling of his tale does not disappoint him. For getting me started on
the story, I have Mr. Adirubasamy to thank. For helping me complete it, I am grateful to three officials of
exemplary professionalism: Mr. Kazuhiko Oda, lately of the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa; Mr. Hiroshi
Watanabe, of Oika Shipping Company; and, especially, Mr. Tomohiro Okamoto, of the Japanese Ministry of
Transport, now retired. As for the spark of life, I owe it to Mr. Moacyr Scliar. Lastly, I would like to express
my sincere gratitude to that great institution, the Canada Council for the Arts, without whose grant I could not
have brought together this story that has nothing to do with Portugal in 1939. If we, citizens, do not support
our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing
and having worthless dreams.
PART ONE
Toronto and Pondicherry
CHAPTER I
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly wrought me back to life. I have kept up
with what some people would consider my strange religious practices. After one year of high school, I
attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious
studies and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony
theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My zoology thesis was a functional
analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour-calm, quiet and
introspective-did something to soothe my shattered self.
There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the case being determined by the forepaws of the
animals, since all sloths have three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck one summer of studying the
three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only real habit is
indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hours a day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild
three-toed sloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after they had fallen asleep, bright red plastic
dishes filled with water. We found them still in place late the next morning, the water of the dishes swarming
with insects. The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in the most relaxed sense. It moves
along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour.
On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times
slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour.
The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents
unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloths senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing
a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two
or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it
should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. As for hearing, the sloth is
not so much deaf as uninterested in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths
elicited little reaction. And the sloth's slightly better sense of smell should not be overestimated. They are said
Page 4
