Summary :- Yann Martel's Life of Pi is the story of a young man who survives a harrowing shipwreck and months in a lifeboat with a large Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The beginning of the novel covers Pi's childhood and youth.
Author’s Note
Author’s Note
This book was bom as I was hungry. Let me explain, hi 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, 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-Fouis, 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.”
“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 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.
Chapter 1
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 to be able to
sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging
to decayed branches “often.”
How does it survive, you might ask.
Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm’s way, away from
the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas. A sloth’s hairs shelter an algae that is
brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the animal blends in with the
surrounding moss and foliage and looks like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all
but part of a tree.
The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment.
“A good-natured smile is forever on its lips,” reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my
own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a
time during that month in Brazil, looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of
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.
Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. A number of my fellow religious-studies students-
muddled agnostics who didn’t know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fool’s
gold for the bright-reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful
example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God.
I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic,
hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when
they are not preoccupied with science.
I was a very good student, if I may say so myself. I was tops at St. Michael’s College four
years in a row. I got every possible student award from the Department of Zoology. If I got none
from the Department of Religious Studies, it is simply because there are no student awards in this
department (the rewards of religious study are not in mortal hands, we all know that). I would have
received the Governor General’s Academic Medal, the University of Toronto’s highest
undergraduate award, of which no small number of illustrious Canadians have been recipients, were
it not for a beef-eating pink boy with a neck like a tree trunk and a temperament of unbearable good
cheer.
I still smart a little at the slight. When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain
is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is
always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I
look at it and I say, “You’ve got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe
in death. Move on!” The skull snickers and moves ever closer, but that doesn’t surprise me. The
reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity-it’ s envy. Uife is so beautiful that
death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps
over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing
shadow of a cloud. The pink boy also got the nod from the Rhodes Scholarship committee. I love
him and I hope his time at Oxford was a rich experience. If Uakshmi, goddess of wealth, one day
favours me bountifully, Oxford is fifth on the list of cities I would like to visit before I pass on, after
Mecca, Varanasi, Jerusalem and Paris.
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it
will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.
I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals
on the silver screen, the cows wandering the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket
matches, but I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by
compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos. Anyway, I have nothing to go home to in
Pondicherry.
Richard Parker has stayed with me. I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I
miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with
love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me
so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like
an axe that chops at my heart.
The doctors and nurses at the hospital in Mexico were incredibly kind to me. And the patients,
too. Victims of cancer or car accidents, once they heard my story, they hobbled and wheeled over to
see me, they and their families, though none of them spoke English and I spoke no Spanish. They
smiled at me, shook my hand, patted me on the head, left gifts of food and clothing on my bed.
They moved me to uncontrollable fits of laughing and crying.
Within a couple of days I could stand, even make two, three steps, despite nausea, dizziness
and general weakness. Blood tests revealed that I was anemic, and that my level of sodium was very
high and my potassium low. My body retained fluids and my legs swelled up tremendously. I
looked as if I had been grafted with a pair of elephant legs. My urine was a deep, dark yellow going
on to brown. After a week or so, I could walk just about normally and I could wear shoes if I didn’t
lace them up. My skin healed, though I still have scars on my shoulders and back.
The first time I turned a tap on, its noisy, wasteful, superabundant gush was such a shock that
I became incoherent and my legs collapsed beneath me and I fainted in the arms of a nurse.
The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada I used my fingers. The waiter looked at
me critically and said, “Fresh off the boat, are you?” I blanched. My fingers, which a second before
had been taste buds savouring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze.
They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn’t dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my
napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were like nails being driven
into my flesh. I picked up the knife and fork. I had hardly ever used such instruments. My hands
trembled. My sambar lost its taste.
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 to be able to
sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging
to decayed branches “often.”
How does it survive, you might ask.
Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm’s way, away from
the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas. A sloth’s hairs shelter an algae that is
brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the animal blends in with the
surrounding moss and foliage and looks like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all
but part of a tree.
The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment.
“A good-natured smile is forever on its lips,” reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my
own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a
time during that month in Brazil, looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of
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.
Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. A number of my fellow religious-studies students-
muddled agnostics who didn’t know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fool’s
gold for the bright-reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful
example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God.
I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic,
hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when
they are not preoccupied with science.
I was a very good student, if I may say so myself. I was tops at St. Michael’s College four
years in a row. I got every possible student award from the Department of Zoology. If I got none
from the Department of Religious Studies, it is simply because there are no student awards in this
department (the rewards of religious study are not in mortal hands, we all know that). I would have
received the Governor General’s Academic Medal, the University of Toronto’s highest
undergraduate award, of which no small number of illustrious Canadians have been recipients, were
it not for a beef-eating pink boy with a neck like a tree trunk and a temperament of unbearable good
cheer.
I still smart a little at the slight. When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain
is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is
always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I
look at it and I say, “You’ve got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe
in death. Move on!” The skull snickers and moves ever closer, but that doesn’t surprise me. The
reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity-it’ s envy. Uife is so beautiful that
death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps
over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing
shadow of a cloud. The pink boy also got the nod from the Rhodes Scholarship committee. I love
him and I hope his time at Oxford was a rich experience. If Uakshmi, goddess of wealth, one day
favours me bountifully, Oxford is fifth on the list of cities I would like to visit before I pass on, after
Mecca, Varanasi, Jerusalem and Paris.
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it
will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.
I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals
on the silver screen, the cows wandering the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket
matches, but I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by
compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos. Anyway, I have nothing to go home to in
Pondicherry.
Richard Parker has stayed with me. I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I
miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with
love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me
so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like
an axe that chops at my heart.
The doctors and nurses at the hospital in Mexico were incredibly kind to me. And the patients,
too. Victims of cancer or car accidents, once they heard my story, they hobbled and wheeled over to
see me, they and their families, though none of them spoke English and I spoke no Spanish. They
smiled at me, shook my hand, patted me on the head, left gifts of food and clothing on my bed.
They moved me to uncontrollable fits of laughing and crying.
Within a couple of days I could stand, even make two, three steps, despite nausea, dizziness
and general weakness. Blood tests revealed that I was anemic, and that my level of sodium was very
high and my potassium low. My body retained fluids and my legs swelled up tremendously. I
looked as if I had been grafted with a pair of elephant legs. My urine was a deep, dark yellow going
on to brown. After a week or so, I could walk just about normally and I could wear shoes if I didn’t
lace them up. My skin healed, though I still have scars on my shoulders and back.
The first time I turned a tap on, its noisy, wasteful, superabundant gush was such a shock that
I became incoherent and my legs collapsed beneath me and I fainted in the arms of a nurse.
The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada I used my fingers. The waiter looked at
me critically and said, “Fresh off the boat, are you?” I blanched. My fingers, which a second before
had been taste buds savouring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze.
They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn’t dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my
napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were like nails being driven
into my flesh. I picked up the knife and fork. I had hardly ever used such instruments. My hands
trembled. My sambar lost its taste.
Chapter 2
He lives in Scarborough. He’s a small, slim man-no more than five foot five. Dark
hair, dark eyes. Hair greying at the temples. Can’t be older than forty. Pleasing
coffee-coloured complexion. Mild fall weather, yet puts on a big winter parka with
fur-lined hood for the walk to the diner. Expressive face. Speaks quickly, hands flitting
about. No small talk. He launches forth.
hair, dark eyes. Hair greying at the temples. Can’t be older than forty. Pleasing
coffee-coloured complexion. Mild fall weather, yet puts on a big winter parka with
fur-lined hood for the walk to the diner. Expressive face. Speaks quickly, hands flitting
about. No small talk. He launches forth.
Chapter 3
I was named after a swimming pool. Quite peculiar considering my parents never took to
water. One of my father’s earliest business contacts was Francis Adirubasamy. He became a good
friend of the family. I called him Mamaji, mama being the Tamil word for uncle and ji being a
suffix used in India to indicate respect and affection. When he was a young man, long before I was
born, Mamaji was a champion competitive swimmer, the champion of all South India. He looked
the part his whole life. My brother Ravi once told me that when Mamaji was born he didn’t want to
give up on breathing water and so the doctor, to save his life, had to take him by the feet and swing
him above his head round and round.
“It did the trick!” said Ravi, wildly spinning his hand above his head. “He coughed out water
and started breathing air, but it forced all his flesh and blood to his upper body. That’ s why his chest
is so thick and his legs are so skinny.”
I believed him. (Ravi was a merciless teaser. The first time he called Mamaji “Mr. Fish” to
my face I left a banana peel in his bed.) Even in his sixties, when he was a little stooped and a
lifetime of counter-obstetric gravity had begun to nudge his flesh downwards, Mamaji swam thirty
lengths every morning at the pool of the Aurobindo Ashram.
He tried to teach my parents to swim, but he never got them to go beyond wading up to their
knees at the beach and making ludicrous round motions with their arms, which, if they were
practising the breaststroke, made them look as if they were walking through a jungle, spreading the
tall grass ahead of them, or, if it was the front crawl, as if they were running down a hill and flailing
their arms so as not to fall. Ravi was just as unenthusiastic.
Mamaji had to wait until I came into the picture to find a willing disciple. The day I came of
swimming age, which, to Mother’s distress, Mamaji claimed was seven, he brought me down to the
beach, spread his arms seaward and said, “This is my gift to you.”
“And then he nearly drowned you,” claimed Mother.
I remained faithful to my aquatic guru. Under his watchful eye I lay on the beach and fluttered
my legs and scratched away at the sand with my hands, turning my head at every stroke to breathe. I
must have looked like a child throwing a peculiar, slow-motion tantrum. In the water, as he held me
at the surface, I tried my best to swim. It was much more difficult than on land. But Mamaji was
patient and encouraging.
When he felt that I had progressed sufficiently, we turned our backs on the laughing and the
shouting, the running and the splashing, the blue-green waves and the bubbly surf, and headed for
the proper rectangularity and the formal flatness (and the paying admission) of the ashram
swimming pool.
I went there with him three times a week throughout my childhood, a Monday, Wednesday,
Friday early morning ritual with the clockwork regularity of a good front-crawl stroke. I have vivid
memories of this dignified old man stripping down to nakedness next to me, his body slowly
emerging as he neatly disposed of each item of clothing, decency being salvaged at the very end by
a slight turning away and a magnificent pair of imported athletic bathing trunks. He stood straight
and he was ready. It had an epic simplicity. Swimming instruction, which in time became
swimming practice, was gruelling, but there was the deep pleasure of doing a stroke with increasing
ease and speed, over and over, till hypnosis practically, the water turning from molten lead to liquid
light.
It was on my own, a guilty pleasure, that I returned to the sea, beckoned by the mighty waves
that crashed down and reached for me in humble tidal ripples, gentle lassos that caught their willing
Indian boy.
My gift to Mamaji one birthday, I must have been thirteen or so, was two full lengths of
credible butterfly. I finished so spent I could hardly wave to him.
Beyond the activity of swimming, there was the talk of it. It was the talk that Father loved.
The more vigorously he resisted actually swimming, the more he fancied it. Swim lore was his
vacation talk from the workaday talk of running a zoo. Water without a hippopotamus was so much
more manageable than water with one.
Mamaji studied in Paris for two years, thanks to the colonial administration. He had the time
of his life. This was in the early 1930s, when the French were still trying to make Pondicherry as
Gallic as the British were trying to make the rest of India Britannic. I don’t recall exactly what
Mamaji studied. Something commercial, I suppose. He was a great storyteller, but forget about his
studies or the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or the cafes of the Champs-Elysees. All his stories had to
do with swimming pools and swimming competitions. For example, there was the Piscine Deligny,
the city’s oldest pool, dating back to 1796, an open-air barge moored to the Quai d’Orsay and the
venue for the swimming events of the 1900 Olympics. But none of the times were recognized by the
International Swimming Federation because the pool was six metres too long. The water in the pool
came straight from the Seine, unfiltered and unheated. “It was cold and dirty,” said Mamaji. "The
water, having crossed all of Paris, came in foul enough. Then people at the pool made it utterly
disgusting.” In conspiratorial whispers, with shocking details to back up his claim, he assured us
that the French had very low standards of personal hygiene. “Deligny was bad enough. Bain Royal,
another latrine on the Seine, was worse. At least at Deligny they scooped out the dead fish.”
Nevertheless, an Olympic pool is an Olympic pool, touched by immortal glory. Though it was a
cesspool, Mamaji spoke of Deligny with a fond smile.
One was better off at the Piscines Chateau-Landon, Rouvet or du boulevard de la Gare. They
were indoor pools with roofs, on land and open year-round. Their water was supplied by the
condensation from steam engines from nearby factories and so was cleaner and warmer. But these
pools were still a bit dingy and tended to be crowded. “There was so much gob and spit floating in
the water, I thought I was swimming through jellyfish,” chuckled Mamaji.
The Piscines Hebert, Ledru-Rollin and Butte-aux-Cailles were bright, modern, spacious pools
fed by artesian wells. They set the standard for excellence in municipal swimming pools. There was
the Piscine des Tourelles, of course, the city’s other great Olympic pool, inaugurated during the
second Paris games, of 1924. And there were still others, many of them.
But no swimming pool in Mamaji’ s eyes matched the glory of the Piscine Molitor. It was the
crowning aquatic glory of Paris, indeed, of the entire civilized world.
“It was a pool the gods would have delighted to swim in. Molitor had the best competitive
swimming club in Paris. There were two pools, an indoor and an outdoor. Both were as big as small
oceans. The indoor pool always had two lanes reserved for swimmers who wanted to do lengths.
The water was so clean and clear you could have used it to make your morning coffee. Wooden
changing cabins, blue and white, surrounded the pool on two floors. You could look down and see
everyone and everything. The porters who marked your cabin door with chalk to show that it was
occupied were limping old men, friendly in an ill-tempered way. No amount of shouting and
tomfoolery ever ruffled them. The showers gushed hot, soothing water. There was a steam room
and an exercise room. The outside pool became a skating rink in winter. There was a bar, a
cafeteria, a large sunning deck, even two small beaches with real sand. Every bit of tile, brass and
wood gleamed. It was-it was. . .”
It was the only pool that made Mamaji fall silent, his memory making too many lengths to
mention.
Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed.
That is how I got my name when I entered this world, a last, welcome addition to my family,
three years after Ravi: Piscine Molitor Patel
water. One of my father’s earliest business contacts was Francis Adirubasamy. He became a good
friend of the family. I called him Mamaji, mama being the Tamil word for uncle and ji being a
suffix used in India to indicate respect and affection. When he was a young man, long before I was
born, Mamaji was a champion competitive swimmer, the champion of all South India. He looked
the part his whole life. My brother Ravi once told me that when Mamaji was born he didn’t want to
give up on breathing water and so the doctor, to save his life, had to take him by the feet and swing
him above his head round and round.
“It did the trick!” said Ravi, wildly spinning his hand above his head. “He coughed out water
and started breathing air, but it forced all his flesh and blood to his upper body. That’ s why his chest
is so thick and his legs are so skinny.”
I believed him. (Ravi was a merciless teaser. The first time he called Mamaji “Mr. Fish” to
my face I left a banana peel in his bed.) Even in his sixties, when he was a little stooped and a
lifetime of counter-obstetric gravity had begun to nudge his flesh downwards, Mamaji swam thirty
lengths every morning at the pool of the Aurobindo Ashram.
He tried to teach my parents to swim, but he never got them to go beyond wading up to their
knees at the beach and making ludicrous round motions with their arms, which, if they were
practising the breaststroke, made them look as if they were walking through a jungle, spreading the
tall grass ahead of them, or, if it was the front crawl, as if they were running down a hill and flailing
their arms so as not to fall. Ravi was just as unenthusiastic.
Mamaji had to wait until I came into the picture to find a willing disciple. The day I came of
swimming age, which, to Mother’s distress, Mamaji claimed was seven, he brought me down to the
beach, spread his arms seaward and said, “This is my gift to you.”
“And then he nearly drowned you,” claimed Mother.
I remained faithful to my aquatic guru. Under his watchful eye I lay on the beach and fluttered
my legs and scratched away at the sand with my hands, turning my head at every stroke to breathe. I
must have looked like a child throwing a peculiar, slow-motion tantrum. In the water, as he held me
at the surface, I tried my best to swim. It was much more difficult than on land. But Mamaji was
patient and encouraging.
When he felt that I had progressed sufficiently, we turned our backs on the laughing and the
shouting, the running and the splashing, the blue-green waves and the bubbly surf, and headed for
the proper rectangularity and the formal flatness (and the paying admission) of the ashram
swimming pool.
I went there with him three times a week throughout my childhood, a Monday, Wednesday,
Friday early morning ritual with the clockwork regularity of a good front-crawl stroke. I have vivid
memories of this dignified old man stripping down to nakedness next to me, his body slowly
emerging as he neatly disposed of each item of clothing, decency being salvaged at the very end by
a slight turning away and a magnificent pair of imported athletic bathing trunks. He stood straight
and he was ready. It had an epic simplicity. Swimming instruction, which in time became
swimming practice, was gruelling, but there was the deep pleasure of doing a stroke with increasing
ease and speed, over and over, till hypnosis practically, the water turning from molten lead to liquid
light.
It was on my own, a guilty pleasure, that I returned to the sea, beckoned by the mighty waves
that crashed down and reached for me in humble tidal ripples, gentle lassos that caught their willing
Indian boy.
My gift to Mamaji one birthday, I must have been thirteen or so, was two full lengths of
credible butterfly. I finished so spent I could hardly wave to him.
Beyond the activity of swimming, there was the talk of it. It was the talk that Father loved.
The more vigorously he resisted actually swimming, the more he fancied it. Swim lore was his
vacation talk from the workaday talk of running a zoo. Water without a hippopotamus was so much
more manageable than water with one.
Mamaji studied in Paris for two years, thanks to the colonial administration. He had the time
of his life. This was in the early 1930s, when the French were still trying to make Pondicherry as
Gallic as the British were trying to make the rest of India Britannic. I don’t recall exactly what
Mamaji studied. Something commercial, I suppose. He was a great storyteller, but forget about his
studies or the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or the cafes of the Champs-Elysees. All his stories had to
do with swimming pools and swimming competitions. For example, there was the Piscine Deligny,
the city’s oldest pool, dating back to 1796, an open-air barge moored to the Quai d’Orsay and the
venue for the swimming events of the 1900 Olympics. But none of the times were recognized by the
International Swimming Federation because the pool was six metres too long. The water in the pool
came straight from the Seine, unfiltered and unheated. “It was cold and dirty,” said Mamaji. "The
water, having crossed all of Paris, came in foul enough. Then people at the pool made it utterly
disgusting.” In conspiratorial whispers, with shocking details to back up his claim, he assured us
that the French had very low standards of personal hygiene. “Deligny was bad enough. Bain Royal,
another latrine on the Seine, was worse. At least at Deligny they scooped out the dead fish.”
Nevertheless, an Olympic pool is an Olympic pool, touched by immortal glory. Though it was a
cesspool, Mamaji spoke of Deligny with a fond smile.
One was better off at the Piscines Chateau-Landon, Rouvet or du boulevard de la Gare. They
were indoor pools with roofs, on land and open year-round. Their water was supplied by the
condensation from steam engines from nearby factories and so was cleaner and warmer. But these
pools were still a bit dingy and tended to be crowded. “There was so much gob and spit floating in
the water, I thought I was swimming through jellyfish,” chuckled Mamaji.
The Piscines Hebert, Ledru-Rollin and Butte-aux-Cailles were bright, modern, spacious pools
fed by artesian wells. They set the standard for excellence in municipal swimming pools. There was
the Piscine des Tourelles, of course, the city’s other great Olympic pool, inaugurated during the
second Paris games, of 1924. And there were still others, many of them.
But no swimming pool in Mamaji’ s eyes matched the glory of the Piscine Molitor. It was the
crowning aquatic glory of Paris, indeed, of the entire civilized world.
“It was a pool the gods would have delighted to swim in. Molitor had the best competitive
swimming club in Paris. There were two pools, an indoor and an outdoor. Both were as big as small
oceans. The indoor pool always had two lanes reserved for swimmers who wanted to do lengths.
The water was so clean and clear you could have used it to make your morning coffee. Wooden
changing cabins, blue and white, surrounded the pool on two floors. You could look down and see
everyone and everything. The porters who marked your cabin door with chalk to show that it was
occupied were limping old men, friendly in an ill-tempered way. No amount of shouting and
tomfoolery ever ruffled them. The showers gushed hot, soothing water. There was a steam room
and an exercise room. The outside pool became a skating rink in winter. There was a bar, a
cafeteria, a large sunning deck, even two small beaches with real sand. Every bit of tile, brass and
wood gleamed. It was-it was. . .”
It was the only pool that made Mamaji fall silent, his memory making too many lengths to
mention.
Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed.
That is how I got my name when I entered this world, a last, welcome addition to my family,
three years after Ravi: Piscine Molitor Patel
Chapter 4
Our good old nation was just seven years old as a republic when it became bigger by a small
territory. Pondicherry entered the Union of India on November 1, 1954. One civic achievement
called for another. A portion of the grounds of the Pondicherry Botanical Garden was made
available rent-free for an exciting business opportunity and-lo and behold-India had a brand new
zoo, designed and run according to the most modern, biologically sound principles.
It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it,
though it seemed to get smaller as I grew older, train included. Now it’s so small it fits in my head.
You must imagine a hot and humid place, bathed in sunshine and bright colours. The riot of flowers
is incessant. There are trees, shrubs and climbing plants in profusion-peepuls, gulmohurs, flames of
the forest, red silk cottons, jacarandas, mangoes, jackfruits and many others that would remain
unknown to you if they didn’t have neat labels at their feet. There are benches. On these benches
you see men sleeping, stretched out, or couples sitting, young couples, who steal glances at each
other shyly and whose hands flutter in the air, happening to touch. Suddenly, amidst the tall and
slim trees up ahead, you notice two giraffes quietly observing you. The sight is not the last of your
surprises. The next moment you are startled by a furious outburst coming from a great troupe of
monkeys, only outdone in volume by the shrill cries of strange birds. You come to a turnstile. You
distractedly pay a small sum of money. You move on. You see a low wall. What can you expect
beyond a low wall? Certainly not a shallow pit with two mighty Indian rhinoceros. But that is what
you find. And when you turn your head you see the elephant that was there all along, so big you
didn’t notice it. And in the pond you realize those are hippopotamuses floating in the water. The
more you look, the more you see. You are in Zootown!
Before moving to Pondicherry, Father ran a large hotel in Madras. An abiding interest in
animals led him to the zoo business. A natural transition, you might think, from hotelkeeping to
zookeeping. Not so. In many ways, running a zoo is a hotelkeeper’s worst nightmare. Consider: the
guests never leave their rooms; they expect not only lodging but full board; they receive a constant
flow of visitors, some of whom are noisy and unruly. One has to wait until they saunter to their
balconies, so to speak, before one can clean their rooms, and then one has to wait until they tire of
the view and return to their rooms before one can clean their balconies; and there is much cleaning
to do, for the guests are as unhygienic as alcoholics. Each guest is very particular about his or her
diet, constantly complains about the slowness of the service, and never, ever tips. To speak frankly,
many are sexual deviants, either terribly repressed and subject to explosions of frenzied
lasciviousness or openly depraved, in either case regularly affronting management with gross
outrages of free sex and incest. Are these the sorts of guests you would want to welcome to your
inn? The Pondicherry Zoo was the source of some pleasure and many headaches for Mr. Santosh
Patel, founder, owner, director, head of a staff of fifty-three, and my father.
To me, it was paradise on earth. I have nothing but the fondest memories of growing up in a
zoo. I lived the life of a prince. What maharaja’s son had such vast, luxuriant grounds to play
about? What palace had such a menagerie? My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of
lions. They were no Swiss clocks, but the lions could be counted upon to roar their heads off
between five-thirty and six every morning. Breakfast was punctuated by the shrieks and cries of
howler monkeys, hill mynahs and Moluccan cockatoos. I left for school under the benevolent gaze
not only of Mother but also of bright-eyed otters and burly American bison and stretching and
yawning orang-utans. I looked up as I ran under some trees, otherwise peafowl might excrete on
me. Better to go by the trees that sheltered the large colonies of fruit bats; the only assault there at
that early hour was the bats’ discordant concerts of squeaking and chattering. On my way out I
might stop by the terraria to look at some shiny frogs glazed bright, bright green, or yellow and
deep blue, or brown and pale green. Or it might be birds that caught my attention: pink flamingoes
or black swans or one-wattled cassowaries, or something smaller, silver diamond doves, Cape
glossy starlings, peach-faced lovebirds, Nanday conures, orange-fronted parakeets. Not likely that
the elephants, the seals, the big cats or the bears would be up and doing, but the baboons, the
macaques, the mangabeys, the gibbons, the deer, the tapirs, the llamas, the giraffes, the mongooses
were early risers. Every morning before I was out the main gate I had one last impression that was
both ordinary and unforgettable: a pyramid of turtles; the iridescent snout of a mandrill; the stately
silence of a giraffe; the obese, yellow open mouth of a hippo; the beak-and-claw climbing of a
macaw parrot up a wire fence; the greeting claps of a shoebill's bill; the senile, lecherous expression
of a camel. And all these riches were had quickly, as I hurried to school. It was after school that I
discovered in a leisurely way what it’s like to have an elephant search your clothes in the friendly
hope of finding a hidden nut, or an orang-utan pick through your hair for tick snacks, its wheeze of
disappointment at what an empty pantry your head is. I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal
slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its
head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
In zoos, as in nature, the best times to visit are sunrise and sunset. That is when most animals
come to life. They stir and leave their shelter and tiptoe to the water’s edge. They show their
raiments. They sing their songs. They turn to each other and perform their rites. The reward for the
watching eye and the listening ear is great. I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the
highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud,
weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.
I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion.
Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are “happy” because they are
“free.” These people usually have a large, handsome predator in mind, a lion or a cheetah (the life
of a gnu or of an aardvark is rarely exalted). They imagine this wild animal roaming about the
savannah on digestive walks after eating a prey that accepted its lot piously, or going for
callisthenic runs to stay slim after overindulging. They imagine this animal overseeing its offspring
proudly and tenderly, the whole family watching the setting of the sun from the limbs of trees with
sighs of pleasure. The life of the wild animal is simple, noble and meaningful, they imagine. Then it
is captured by wicked men and thrown into tiny jails. Its “happiness” is dashed. It yearns mightily
for “freedom” and does all it can to escape. Being denied its “freedom” for too long, the animal
becomes a shadow of itself, its spirit broken. So some people imagine.
This is not the way it is.
Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social
hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where
territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of
freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor
in their personal relations. In theory-that is, as a simple physical possibility-an animal could pick
up and go, flaunting all the social conventions and boundaries proper to its species. But such an
event is less likely to happen than for a member of our own species, say a shopkeeper with all the
usual ties-to family, to friends, to society-to drop everything and walk away from his life with only
the spare change in his pockets and the clothes on his frame. If a man, boldest and most intelligent
of creatures, won’t wander from place to place, a stranger to all, beholden to none, why would an
animal, which is by temperament far more conservative? For that is what animals are, conservative,
one might even say reactionary. The smallest changes can upset them. They want things to be just
so, day after day, month after month. Surprises are highly disagreeable to them. You see this in their
spatial relations. An animal inhabits its space, whether in a zoo or in the wild, in the same way
chess pieces move about a chessboard-significantly. There is no more happenstance, no more
“freedom,” involved in the whereabouts of a lizard or a bear or a deer than in the location of a
knight on a chessboard. Both speak of pattern and purpose. In the wild, animals stick to the same
paths for the same pressing reasons, season after season. In a zoo, if an animal is not in its normal
place in its regular posture at the usual hour, it means something. It may be the reflection of nothing
more than a minor change in the environment. A coiled hose left out by a keeper has made a
menacing impression. A puddle has formed that bothers the animal. A ladder is making a shadow.
But it could mean something more. At its worst, it could be that most dreaded thing to a zoo
director: a symptom, a herald of trouble to come, a reason to inspect the dung, to cross-examine the
keeper, to summon the vet. All this because a stork is not standing where it usually stands!
But let me pursue for a moment only one aspect of the question.
If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into
the street and said, “Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!”-do you think they would shout and
dance for joy? They wouldn’t. Birds are not free. The people you’ve just evicted would sputter,
“With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years.
We’re calling the police, you scoundrel.”
Don’t we say, “There’s no place like home?” That’s certainly what animals feel. Animals are
territorial. That is the key to their minds. Only a familiar territory will allow them to fulfill the two
relentless imperatives of the wild: the avoidance of enemies and the getting of food and water. A
biologically sound zoo enclosure-whether cage, pit, moated island, corral, terrarium, aviary or
aquarium-is just another territory, peculiar only in its size and in its proximity to human territory.
That it is so much smaller than what it would be in nature stands to reason. Territories in the wild
are large not as a matter of taste but of necessity. In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for
ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out. Whereas
before for us the cave was here, the river over there, the hunting grounds a mile that way, the
lookout next to it, the berries somewhere else-all of them infested with lions, snakes, ants, leeches
and poison ivy-now the river flows through taps at hand’s reach and we can wash next to where we
sleep, we can eat where we have cooked, and we can surround the whole with a protective wall and
keep it clean and warm. A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled
close by and safely. A sound zoo enclosure is the equivalent for an animal (with the noteworthy
absence of a fireplace or the like, present in every human habitation). Finding within it all the places
it needs-a lookout, a place for resting, for eating and drinking, for bathing, for grooming, etc.-and
finding that there is no need to go hunting, food appearing six days a week, an animal will take
possession of its zoo space in the same way it would lay claim to a new space in the wild, exploring
it and marking it out in the normal ways of its species, with sprays of urine perhaps. Once this
moving-in ritual is done and the animal has settled, it will not feel like a nervous tenant, and even
less like a prisoner, but rather like a landholder, and it will behave in the same way within its
enclosure as it would in its territory in the wild, including defending it tooth and nail should it be
invaded. Such an enclosure is subjectively neither better nor worse for an animal than its condition
in the wild; so long as it fulfills the animal’s needs, a territory, natural or constructed, simply is,
without judgment, a given, like the spots on a leopard. One might even argue that if an animal could
choose with intelligence, it would opt for living in a zoo, since the major difference between a zoo
and the wild is the absence of parasites and enemies and the abundance of food in the first, and their
respective abundance and scarcity in the second. Think about it yourself. Would you rather be put
up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul
to care for you? But animals are incapable of such discernment. Within the limits of their nature,
they make do with what they have.
A good zoo is a place of carefully worked-out coincidence: exactly where an animal says to
us, “Stay out!” with its urine or other secretion, we say to it, “Stay in!” with our barriers. Under
such conditions of diplomatic peace, all animals are content and we can relax and have a look at
each other.
In the literature can be found legions of examples of animals that could escape but did not, or
did and returned. There is the case of the chimpanzee whose cage door was left unlocked and had
swung open. Increasingly anxious, the chimp began to shriek and to slam the door shut repeatedly-
with a deafening clang each time-until the keeper, notified by a visitor, hurried over to remedy the
situation. A herd of roe-deer in a European zoo stepped out of their corral when the gate was left
open. Frightened by visitors, the deer bolted for the nearby forest, which had its own herd of wild
roe-deer and could support more. Nonetheless, the zoo roe-deer quickly returned to their corral. In
another zoo a worker was walking to his work site at an early hour, carrying planks of wood, when,
to his horror, a bear emerged from the morning mist, heading straight for him at a confident pace.
The man dropped the planks and ran for his life. The zoo staff immediately started searching for the
escaped bear. They found it back in its enclosure, having climbed down into its pit the way it had
climbed out, by way of a tree that had fallen over. It was thought that the noise of the planks of
wood falling to the ground had frightened it.
But I don’t insist. I don’t mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us
hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no
longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom
plague them both.
The Pondicherry Zoo doesn’t exist any more. Its pits are filled in, the cages torn down. I
explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
territory. Pondicherry entered the Union of India on November 1, 1954. One civic achievement
called for another. A portion of the grounds of the Pondicherry Botanical Garden was made
available rent-free for an exciting business opportunity and-lo and behold-India had a brand new
zoo, designed and run according to the most modern, biologically sound principles.
It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it,
though it seemed to get smaller as I grew older, train included. Now it’s so small it fits in my head.
You must imagine a hot and humid place, bathed in sunshine and bright colours. The riot of flowers
is incessant. There are trees, shrubs and climbing plants in profusion-peepuls, gulmohurs, flames of
the forest, red silk cottons, jacarandas, mangoes, jackfruits and many others that would remain
unknown to you if they didn’t have neat labels at their feet. There are benches. On these benches
you see men sleeping, stretched out, or couples sitting, young couples, who steal glances at each
other shyly and whose hands flutter in the air, happening to touch. Suddenly, amidst the tall and
slim trees up ahead, you notice two giraffes quietly observing you. The sight is not the last of your
surprises. The next moment you are startled by a furious outburst coming from a great troupe of
monkeys, only outdone in volume by the shrill cries of strange birds. You come to a turnstile. You
distractedly pay a small sum of money. You move on. You see a low wall. What can you expect
beyond a low wall? Certainly not a shallow pit with two mighty Indian rhinoceros. But that is what
you find. And when you turn your head you see the elephant that was there all along, so big you
didn’t notice it. And in the pond you realize those are hippopotamuses floating in the water. The
more you look, the more you see. You are in Zootown!
Before moving to Pondicherry, Father ran a large hotel in Madras. An abiding interest in
animals led him to the zoo business. A natural transition, you might think, from hotelkeeping to
zookeeping. Not so. In many ways, running a zoo is a hotelkeeper’s worst nightmare. Consider: the
guests never leave their rooms; they expect not only lodging but full board; they receive a constant
flow of visitors, some of whom are noisy and unruly. One has to wait until they saunter to their
balconies, so to speak, before one can clean their rooms, and then one has to wait until they tire of
the view and return to their rooms before one can clean their balconies; and there is much cleaning
to do, for the guests are as unhygienic as alcoholics. Each guest is very particular about his or her
diet, constantly complains about the slowness of the service, and never, ever tips. To speak frankly,
many are sexual deviants, either terribly repressed and subject to explosions of frenzied
lasciviousness or openly depraved, in either case regularly affronting management with gross
outrages of free sex and incest. Are these the sorts of guests you would want to welcome to your
inn? The Pondicherry Zoo was the source of some pleasure and many headaches for Mr. Santosh
Patel, founder, owner, director, head of a staff of fifty-three, and my father.
To me, it was paradise on earth. I have nothing but the fondest memories of growing up in a
zoo. I lived the life of a prince. What maharaja’s son had such vast, luxuriant grounds to play
about? What palace had such a menagerie? My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of
lions. They were no Swiss clocks, but the lions could be counted upon to roar their heads off
between five-thirty and six every morning. Breakfast was punctuated by the shrieks and cries of
howler monkeys, hill mynahs and Moluccan cockatoos. I left for school under the benevolent gaze
not only of Mother but also of bright-eyed otters and burly American bison and stretching and
yawning orang-utans. I looked up as I ran under some trees, otherwise peafowl might excrete on
me. Better to go by the trees that sheltered the large colonies of fruit bats; the only assault there at
that early hour was the bats’ discordant concerts of squeaking and chattering. On my way out I
might stop by the terraria to look at some shiny frogs glazed bright, bright green, or yellow and
deep blue, or brown and pale green. Or it might be birds that caught my attention: pink flamingoes
or black swans or one-wattled cassowaries, or something smaller, silver diamond doves, Cape
glossy starlings, peach-faced lovebirds, Nanday conures, orange-fronted parakeets. Not likely that
the elephants, the seals, the big cats or the bears would be up and doing, but the baboons, the
macaques, the mangabeys, the gibbons, the deer, the tapirs, the llamas, the giraffes, the mongooses
were early risers. Every morning before I was out the main gate I had one last impression that was
both ordinary and unforgettable: a pyramid of turtles; the iridescent snout of a mandrill; the stately
silence of a giraffe; the obese, yellow open mouth of a hippo; the beak-and-claw climbing of a
macaw parrot up a wire fence; the greeting claps of a shoebill's bill; the senile, lecherous expression
of a camel. And all these riches were had quickly, as I hurried to school. It was after school that I
discovered in a leisurely way what it’s like to have an elephant search your clothes in the friendly
hope of finding a hidden nut, or an orang-utan pick through your hair for tick snacks, its wheeze of
disappointment at what an empty pantry your head is. I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal
slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its
head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
In zoos, as in nature, the best times to visit are sunrise and sunset. That is when most animals
come to life. They stir and leave their shelter and tiptoe to the water’s edge. They show their
raiments. They sing their songs. They turn to each other and perform their rites. The reward for the
watching eye and the listening ear is great. I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the
highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud,
weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.
I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion.
Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are “happy” because they are
“free.” These people usually have a large, handsome predator in mind, a lion or a cheetah (the life
of a gnu or of an aardvark is rarely exalted). They imagine this wild animal roaming about the
savannah on digestive walks after eating a prey that accepted its lot piously, or going for
callisthenic runs to stay slim after overindulging. They imagine this animal overseeing its offspring
proudly and tenderly, the whole family watching the setting of the sun from the limbs of trees with
sighs of pleasure. The life of the wild animal is simple, noble and meaningful, they imagine. Then it
is captured by wicked men and thrown into tiny jails. Its “happiness” is dashed. It yearns mightily
for “freedom” and does all it can to escape. Being denied its “freedom” for too long, the animal
becomes a shadow of itself, its spirit broken. So some people imagine.
This is not the way it is.
Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social
hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where
territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of
freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor
in their personal relations. In theory-that is, as a simple physical possibility-an animal could pick
up and go, flaunting all the social conventions and boundaries proper to its species. But such an
event is less likely to happen than for a member of our own species, say a shopkeeper with all the
usual ties-to family, to friends, to society-to drop everything and walk away from his life with only
the spare change in his pockets and the clothes on his frame. If a man, boldest and most intelligent
of creatures, won’t wander from place to place, a stranger to all, beholden to none, why would an
animal, which is by temperament far more conservative? For that is what animals are, conservative,
one might even say reactionary. The smallest changes can upset them. They want things to be just
so, day after day, month after month. Surprises are highly disagreeable to them. You see this in their
spatial relations. An animal inhabits its space, whether in a zoo or in the wild, in the same way
chess pieces move about a chessboard-significantly. There is no more happenstance, no more
“freedom,” involved in the whereabouts of a lizard or a bear or a deer than in the location of a
knight on a chessboard. Both speak of pattern and purpose. In the wild, animals stick to the same
paths for the same pressing reasons, season after season. In a zoo, if an animal is not in its normal
place in its regular posture at the usual hour, it means something. It may be the reflection of nothing
more than a minor change in the environment. A coiled hose left out by a keeper has made a
menacing impression. A puddle has formed that bothers the animal. A ladder is making a shadow.
But it could mean something more. At its worst, it could be that most dreaded thing to a zoo
director: a symptom, a herald of trouble to come, a reason to inspect the dung, to cross-examine the
keeper, to summon the vet. All this because a stork is not standing where it usually stands!
But let me pursue for a moment only one aspect of the question.
If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into
the street and said, “Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!”-do you think they would shout and
dance for joy? They wouldn’t. Birds are not free. The people you’ve just evicted would sputter,
“With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years.
We’re calling the police, you scoundrel.”
Don’t we say, “There’s no place like home?” That’s certainly what animals feel. Animals are
territorial. That is the key to their minds. Only a familiar territory will allow them to fulfill the two
relentless imperatives of the wild: the avoidance of enemies and the getting of food and water. A
biologically sound zoo enclosure-whether cage, pit, moated island, corral, terrarium, aviary or
aquarium-is just another territory, peculiar only in its size and in its proximity to human territory.
That it is so much smaller than what it would be in nature stands to reason. Territories in the wild
are large not as a matter of taste but of necessity. In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for
ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out. Whereas
before for us the cave was here, the river over there, the hunting grounds a mile that way, the
lookout next to it, the berries somewhere else-all of them infested with lions, snakes, ants, leeches
and poison ivy-now the river flows through taps at hand’s reach and we can wash next to where we
sleep, we can eat where we have cooked, and we can surround the whole with a protective wall and
keep it clean and warm. A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled
close by and safely. A sound zoo enclosure is the equivalent for an animal (with the noteworthy
absence of a fireplace or the like, present in every human habitation). Finding within it all the places
it needs-a lookout, a place for resting, for eating and drinking, for bathing, for grooming, etc.-and
finding that there is no need to go hunting, food appearing six days a week, an animal will take
possession of its zoo space in the same way it would lay claim to a new space in the wild, exploring
it and marking it out in the normal ways of its species, with sprays of urine perhaps. Once this
moving-in ritual is done and the animal has settled, it will not feel like a nervous tenant, and even
less like a prisoner, but rather like a landholder, and it will behave in the same way within its
enclosure as it would in its territory in the wild, including defending it tooth and nail should it be
invaded. Such an enclosure is subjectively neither better nor worse for an animal than its condition
in the wild; so long as it fulfills the animal’s needs, a territory, natural or constructed, simply is,
without judgment, a given, like the spots on a leopard. One might even argue that if an animal could
choose with intelligence, it would opt for living in a zoo, since the major difference between a zoo
and the wild is the absence of parasites and enemies and the abundance of food in the first, and their
respective abundance and scarcity in the second. Think about it yourself. Would you rather be put
up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul
to care for you? But animals are incapable of such discernment. Within the limits of their nature,
they make do with what they have.
A good zoo is a place of carefully worked-out coincidence: exactly where an animal says to
us, “Stay out!” with its urine or other secretion, we say to it, “Stay in!” with our barriers. Under
such conditions of diplomatic peace, all animals are content and we can relax and have a look at
each other.
In the literature can be found legions of examples of animals that could escape but did not, or
did and returned. There is the case of the chimpanzee whose cage door was left unlocked and had
swung open. Increasingly anxious, the chimp began to shriek and to slam the door shut repeatedly-
with a deafening clang each time-until the keeper, notified by a visitor, hurried over to remedy the
situation. A herd of roe-deer in a European zoo stepped out of their corral when the gate was left
open. Frightened by visitors, the deer bolted for the nearby forest, which had its own herd of wild
roe-deer and could support more. Nonetheless, the zoo roe-deer quickly returned to their corral. In
another zoo a worker was walking to his work site at an early hour, carrying planks of wood, when,
to his horror, a bear emerged from the morning mist, heading straight for him at a confident pace.
The man dropped the planks and ran for his life. The zoo staff immediately started searching for the
escaped bear. They found it back in its enclosure, having climbed down into its pit the way it had
climbed out, by way of a tree that had fallen over. It was thought that the noise of the planks of
wood falling to the ground had frightened it.
But I don’t insist. I don’t mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us
hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no
longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom
plague them both.
The Pondicherry Zoo doesn’t exist any more. Its pits are filled in, the cages torn down. I
explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
Chapter 5
My name isn’t the end of the story about my name. When your name is Bob no one asks you,
"How do you spell that?” Not so with Piscine Molitor Patel.
Some thought it was P. Singh and that I was a Sikh, and they wondered why I wasn’t wearing
a turban.
In my university days I visited Montreal once with some friends. It fell to me to order pizzas
one night. I couldn’t bear to have yet another French speaker guffawing at my name, so when the
man on the phone asked, “Can I ‘ave your name?” I said, “I am who I am.” Half an hour later two
pizzas arrived for “Ian Hoolihan.”
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same
afterwards, even unto our names. Witness Simon who is called Peter, Matthew also known as Levi,
Nathaniel who is also Bartholomew, Judas, not Iscariot, who took the name Thaddeus, Simeon who
went by Niger, Saul who became Paul.
My Roman soldier stood in the schoolyard one morning when I was twelve. I had just arrived.
He saw me and a flash of evil genius lit up his dull mind. He raised his arm, pointed at me and
shouted, “It’s Pissing Patel!”
In a second everyone was laughing. It fell away as we filed into the class. I walked in last,
wearing my crown of thorns.
The cruelty of children comes as news to no one. The words would waft across the yard to my
ears, unprovoked, uncalled for: “Where’s Pissing? I’ve got to go.” Or: “You’re facing the wall. Are
you Pissing?” Or something of the sort. I would freeze or, the contrary, pursue my activity,
pretending not to have heard. The sound would disappear, but the hurt would linger, like the smell
of piss long after it has evaporated.
Teachers started doing it too. It was the heat. As the day wore on, the geography lesson,
which in the morning had been as compact as an oasis, started to stretch out like the Thar Desert;
the history lesson, so alive when the day was young, became parched and dusty; the mathematics
lesson, so precise at first, became muddled. In their afternoon fatigue, as they wiped their foreheads
and the backs of their necks with their handkerchiefs, without meaning to offend or get a laugh,
even teachers forgot the fresh aquatic promise of my name and distorted it in a shameful way. By
nearly imperceptible modulations I could hear the change. It was as if their tongues were charioteers
driving wild horses. They could manage well enough the first syllable, the Pea , but eventually the
heat was too much and they lost control of their frothy-mouthed steeds and could no longer rein
them in for the climb to the second syllable, the seen . Instead they plunged hell-bent into sing , and
next time round, all was lost. My hand would be up to give an answer and it would be
acknowledged with a “Yes, Pissing .” Often the teacher wouldn’t realize what he had just called
me. He would look at me wearily after a moment, wondering why I wasn’t coming out with the
answer. And sometimes the class, as beaten down by the heat as he was, wouldn’t react either. Not a
snicker or a smile. But I always heard the slur.
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 Seminaire, 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
Seminaire, 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
7T = 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 Seminaire. 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.
"How do you spell that?” Not so with Piscine Molitor Patel.
Some thought it was P. Singh and that I was a Sikh, and they wondered why I wasn’t wearing
a turban.
In my university days I visited Montreal once with some friends. It fell to me to order pizzas
one night. I couldn’t bear to have yet another French speaker guffawing at my name, so when the
man on the phone asked, “Can I ‘ave your name?” I said, “I am who I am.” Half an hour later two
pizzas arrived for “Ian Hoolihan.”
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same
afterwards, even unto our names. Witness Simon who is called Peter, Matthew also known as Levi,
Nathaniel who is also Bartholomew, Judas, not Iscariot, who took the name Thaddeus, Simeon who
went by Niger, Saul who became Paul.
My Roman soldier stood in the schoolyard one morning when I was twelve. I had just arrived.
He saw me and a flash of evil genius lit up his dull mind. He raised his arm, pointed at me and
shouted, “It’s Pissing Patel!”
In a second everyone was laughing. It fell away as we filed into the class. I walked in last,
wearing my crown of thorns.
The cruelty of children comes as news to no one. The words would waft across the yard to my
ears, unprovoked, uncalled for: “Where’s Pissing? I’ve got to go.” Or: “You’re facing the wall. Are
you Pissing?” Or something of the sort. I would freeze or, the contrary, pursue my activity,
pretending not to have heard. The sound would disappear, but the hurt would linger, like the smell
of piss long after it has evaporated.
Teachers started doing it too. It was the heat. As the day wore on, the geography lesson,
which in the morning had been as compact as an oasis, started to stretch out like the Thar Desert;
the history lesson, so alive when the day was young, became parched and dusty; the mathematics
lesson, so precise at first, became muddled. In their afternoon fatigue, as they wiped their foreheads
and the backs of their necks with their handkerchiefs, without meaning to offend or get a laugh,
even teachers forgot the fresh aquatic promise of my name and distorted it in a shameful way. By
nearly imperceptible modulations I could hear the change. It was as if their tongues were charioteers
driving wild horses. They could manage well enough the first syllable, the Pea , but eventually the
heat was too much and they lost control of their frothy-mouthed steeds and could no longer rein
them in for the climb to the second syllable, the seen . Instead they plunged hell-bent into sing , and
next time round, all was lost. My hand would be up to give an answer and it would be
acknowledged with a “Yes, Pissing .” Often the teacher wouldn’t realize what he had just called
me. He would look at me wearily after a moment, wondering why I wasn’t coming out with the
answer. And sometimes the class, as beaten down by the heat as he was, wouldn’t react either. Not a
snicker or a smile. But I always heard the slur.
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 Seminaire, 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
Seminaire, 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
7T = 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 Seminaire. 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.
Chapter 6
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.
1 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.
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.
1 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.
Chapter 7
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
Seminaire 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 I confirmed to him that everything was in order, that everything was
order. He left the zoo feeling scientifically refreshed.
The first time I saw his triangular form teetering and tottering about the zoo, I was shy to
approach him. As much as I liked him as a teacher, he was a figure of authority, and I, a subject. I
was a little afraid of him. I observed him at a distance. He had just come to the rhinoceros pit. The
two Indian rhinos were great attractions at the zoo because of the goats. Rhinos are social animals,
and when we got Peak, a young wild male, he was showing signs of suffering from isolation and he
was eating less and less. As a stopgap measure, while he searched for a female, Father thought of
seeing if Peak couldn’t be accustomed to living with goats. If it worked, it would save a valuable
animal. If it didn’t, it would only cost a few goats. It worked marvellously. Peak and the herd of
goats became inseparable, even when Summit arrived. Now, when the rhinos bathed, the goats
stood around the muddy pool, and when the goats ate in their corner, Peak and Summit stood next
to them like guards. The living arrangement was very popular with the public.
Mr. Kumar looked up and saw me. He smiled and, one hand holding onto the railing, the other
waving, signalled me to come over.
“Hello, Pi,” he said.
“Hello, sir. It’s good of you to come to the zoo.”
“I come here all the time. One might say it’s my temple. This is interesting...” He was
indicating the pit. “If we had politicians like these goats and rhinos we’d have fewer problems in
our country . Unfortunately we have a prime minister who has the armour plating of a rhinoceros
without any of its good sense.”
I didn’t know much about politics. Father and Mother complained regularly about Mrs.
Gandhi, but it meant little to me. She lived far away in the north, not at the zoo and not in
Pondicherry. But I felt I had to say something.
“Religion will save us,” I said. Since when I could remember, religion had been very close to
my heart.
“Religion?” Mr. Kumar grinned broadly. “I don’t believe in religion. Religion is darkness.”
Darkness? I was puzzled. I thought, Darkness is the last thing that religion is. Religion is
light. Was he testing me? Was he saying, “Religion is darkness,” the way he sometimes said in class
things like “Mammals lay eggs,” to see if someone would correct him? (“Only platypuses, sir.”)
“There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound
reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail
and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.”
Did he say that? Or am I remembering the lines of later atheists? At any rate, it was something
of the sort. I had never heard such words.
“Why tolerate darkness? Everything is here and clear, if only we look carefully.”
He was pointing at Peak. Now though I had great admiration for Peak, I had never thought of
a rhinoceros as a light bulb.
He spoke again. “Some people say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died
in 1971 during the war. Or he may have died yesterday here in Pondicherry in an orphanage. That’s
what some people say, Pi. When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself
every day, ‘Where is God? Where is God? Where is God?’ God never came. It wasn’t God who
saved me-it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die.
It’s the end. If the watch doesn’t work properly, it must be fixed here and now by us. One day we
will take hold of the means of production and there will be justice on earth.”
This was all a bit much for me. The tone was right-loving and brave-but the details seemed
bleak. I said nothing. It wasn’t for fear of angering Mr. Kumar. I was more afraid that in a few
words thrown out he might destroy something that I loved. What if his words had the effect of polio
on me? What a terrible disease that must be if it could kill God in a man.
He walked off, pitching and rolling in the wild sea that was the steady ground. “Don’t forget
the test on Tuesday. Study hard, 3.14!”
“Yes, Mr. Kumar.”
He became my favourite teacher at Petit Seminaire and the reason I studied zoology at the
University of Toronto. I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers
and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as
the legs of reason will carry them-and then they leap.
I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is
useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt,
so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move
on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of
transportation.
dark head and lit a match. One of these was Mr. Satish Kumar, my biology teacher at Petit
Seminaire 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 I confirmed to him that everything was in order, that everything was
order. He left the zoo feeling scientifically refreshed.
The first time I saw his triangular form teetering and tottering about the zoo, I was shy to
approach him. As much as I liked him as a teacher, he was a figure of authority, and I, a subject. I
was a little afraid of him. I observed him at a distance. He had just come to the rhinoceros pit. The
two Indian rhinos were great attractions at the zoo because of the goats. Rhinos are social animals,
and when we got Peak, a young wild male, he was showing signs of suffering from isolation and he
was eating less and less. As a stopgap measure, while he searched for a female, Father thought of
seeing if Peak couldn’t be accustomed to living with goats. If it worked, it would save a valuable
animal. If it didn’t, it would only cost a few goats. It worked marvellously. Peak and the herd of
goats became inseparable, even when Summit arrived. Now, when the rhinos bathed, the goats
stood around the muddy pool, and when the goats ate in their corner, Peak and Summit stood next
to them like guards. The living arrangement was very popular with the public.
Mr. Kumar looked up and saw me. He smiled and, one hand holding onto the railing, the other
waving, signalled me to come over.
“Hello, Pi,” he said.
“Hello, sir. It’s good of you to come to the zoo.”
“I come here all the time. One might say it’s my temple. This is interesting...” He was
indicating the pit. “If we had politicians like these goats and rhinos we’d have fewer problems in
our country . Unfortunately we have a prime minister who has the armour plating of a rhinoceros
without any of its good sense.”
I didn’t know much about politics. Father and Mother complained regularly about Mrs.
Gandhi, but it meant little to me. She lived far away in the north, not at the zoo and not in
Pondicherry. But I felt I had to say something.
“Religion will save us,” I said. Since when I could remember, religion had been very close to
my heart.
“Religion?” Mr. Kumar grinned broadly. “I don’t believe in religion. Religion is darkness.”
Darkness? I was puzzled. I thought, Darkness is the last thing that religion is. Religion is
light. Was he testing me? Was he saying, “Religion is darkness,” the way he sometimes said in class
things like “Mammals lay eggs,” to see if someone would correct him? (“Only platypuses, sir.”)
“There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound
reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail
and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.”
Did he say that? Or am I remembering the lines of later atheists? At any rate, it was something
of the sort. I had never heard such words.
“Why tolerate darkness? Everything is here and clear, if only we look carefully.”
He was pointing at Peak. Now though I had great admiration for Peak, I had never thought of
a rhinoceros as a light bulb.
He spoke again. “Some people say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died
in 1971 during the war. Or he may have died yesterday here in Pondicherry in an orphanage. That’s
what some people say, Pi. When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself
every day, ‘Where is God? Where is God? Where is God?’ God never came. It wasn’t God who
saved me-it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die.
It’s the end. If the watch doesn’t work properly, it must be fixed here and now by us. One day we
will take hold of the means of production and there will be justice on earth.”
This was all a bit much for me. The tone was right-loving and brave-but the details seemed
bleak. I said nothing. It wasn’t for fear of angering Mr. Kumar. I was more afraid that in a few
words thrown out he might destroy something that I loved. What if his words had the effect of polio
on me? What a terrible disease that must be if it could kill God in a man.
He walked off, pitching and rolling in the wild sea that was the steady ground. “Don’t forget
the test on Tuesday. Study hard, 3.14!”
“Yes, Mr. Kumar.”
He became my favourite teacher at Petit Seminaire and the reason I studied zoology at the
University of Toronto. I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers
and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as
the legs of reason will carry them-and then they leap.
I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is
useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt,
so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move
on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of
transportation.
Chapter 8
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man. In a general
way we mean how our species’ excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey. More
specifically, we have in mind the people who feed fishhooks to the otters, razors to the bears, apples
with small nails in them to the elephants and hardware variations on the theme: ballpoint pens,
paper clips, safety pins, rubber bands, combs, coffee spoons, horseshoes, pieces of broken glass,
rings, brooches and other jewellery (and not just cheap plastic bangles: gold wedding bands, too),
drinking straws, plastic cutlery, ping-pong balls, tennis balls and so on. The obituary of zoo animals
that have died from being fed foreign bodies would include gorillas, bison, storks, rheas, ostriches,
seals, sea lions, big cats, bears, camels, elephants, monkeys, and most every variety of deer,
ruminant and songbird. Among zookeepers, Goliath’s death is famous; he was a bull elephant seal,
a great big venerable beast of two tons, star of his European zoo, loved by all visitors. He died of
internal bleeding after someone fed him a broken beer bottle.
The cruelty is often more active and direct. The literature contains reports on the many
torments inflicted upon zoo animals: a shoebill dying of shock after having its beak smashed with a
hammer; a moose stag losing its beard, along with a strip of flesh the size of an index finger, to a
visitor’s knife (this same moose was poisoned six months later); a monkey’s arm broken after
reaching out for proffered nuts; a deer’s antlers attacked with a hacksaw; a zebra stabbed with a
sword; and other assaults on other animals, with walking sticks, umbrellas, hairpins, knitting
needles, scissors and whatnot, often with an aim to taking an eye out or to injuring sexual parts.
Animals are also poisoned. And there are indecencies even more bizarre: onanists breaking a sweat
on monkeys, ponies, birds; a religious freak who cut a snake’s head off; a deranged man who took
to urinating in an elk’s mouth.
At Pondicherry we were relatively fortunate. We were spared the sadists who plied European
and American zoos. Nonetheless, our golden agouti vanished, stolen by someone who ate it, Father
suspected. Various birds-pheasants, peacocks, macaws-lost feathers to people greedy for their
beauty. We caught a man with a knife climbing into the pen for mouse deer; he said he was going to
punish evil Ravana (who in the Ramayana took the form of a deer when he kidnapped Sita, Rama’ s
consort). Another man was nabbed in the process of stealing a cobra. He was a snake charmer
whose own snake had died. Both were saved: the cobra from a life of servitude and bad music, and
the man from a possible death bite. We had to deal on occasion with stone throwers, who found the
animals too placid and wanted a reaction. And we had the lady whose sari was caught by a lion. She
spun like a yo-yo, choosing mortal embarrassment over mortal end. The thing was, it wasn’t even
an accident. She had leaned over, thrust her hand in the cage and waved the end of her sari in the
lion’s face, with what intent we never figured out. She was not injured; there were many fascinated
men who came to her assistance. Her flustered explanation to Father was, “Whoever heard of a lion
eating a cotton sari? I thought lions were carnivores.” Our worst troublemakers were the visitors
who gave food to the animals. Despite our vigilance. Dr. Atal, the zoo veterinarian, could tell by the
number of animals with digestive disturbances which had been the busy days at the zoo. He called
“tidbit-itis” the cases of enteritis or gastritis due to too many carbohydrates, especially sugar.
Sometimes we wished people had stuck to sweets. People have a notion that animals can eat
anything without the least consequence to their health. Not so. One of our sloth bears became
seriously ill with severe hemorrhagic enteritis after being given fish that had gone putrid by a man
who was convinced he was doing a good deed.
Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question:
Do You Know Which is the Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo?
An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at
the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
But I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more
dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every
habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthropomorphicus , the animal as seen through human
eyes. We’ve all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is “cute,” “friendly,”
“loving,” “devoted,” “merry,” “understanding.” These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and
children’s zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those “vicious,”
“bloodthirsty,” “depraved” animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who
vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and
see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of
theologians but also of zoologists.
I learned the lesson that an animal is an animal, essentially and practically removed from us,
twice: once with Father and once with Richard Parker.
It was on a Sunday morning. I was quietly playing on my own. Father called out.
“Children, come here.”
Something was wrong. His tone of voice set off a small alarm bell in my head. I quickly
reviewed my conscience. It was clear. Ravi must be in trouble again. I wondered what he had done
this time. I walked into the living room. Mother was there. That was unusual. The disciplining of
children, like the tending of animals, was generally left to Father. Ravi walked in last, guilt written
all over his criminal face.
“Ravi, Piscine, I have a very important lesson for you today.”
“Oh really, is this necessary?” interrupted Mother. Her face was flushed.
I swallowed. If Mother, normally so unruffled, so calm, was worried, even upset, it meant we
were in serious trouble. I exchanged glances with Ravi.
“Yes, it is,” said Father, annoyed. “It may very well save their lives.”
Save our lives! It was no longer a small alarm bell that was ringing in my head-they were big
bells now, like the ones we heard from Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, not far from the zoo.
“But Piscine? He’s only eight,” Mother insisted.
“He’s the one who worries me the most.”
“I’m innocent!” I burst out. “It’s Ravi’s fault, whatever it is. He did it!”
“What?” said Ravi. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He gave me the evil eye.
“Shush!” said Father, raising his hand. He was looking at Mother. “Gita, you’ve seen Piscine.
He’s at that age when boys run around and poke their noses everywhere.”
Me? A run-arounder? An everywhere-nose-poker? Not so, not so! Defend me. Mother, defend
me, I implored in my heart. But she only sighed and nodded, a signal that the terrible business could
proceed.
“Come with me,” said Father.
We set out like prisoners off to their execution.
We left the house, went through the gate, entered the zoo. It was early and the zoo hadn’t
opened yet to the public. Animal keepers and groundskeepers were going about their work. I
noticed Sitaram, who oversaw the orang-utans, my favourite keeper. He paused to watch us go by.
We passed birds, bears, apes, monkeys, ungulates, the terrarium house, the rhinos, the elephants, the
giraffes.
We came to the big cats, our tigers, lions and leopards. Babu, their keeper, was waiting for us.
We went round and down the path, and he unlocked the door to the cat house, which was at the
centre of a moated island. We entered. It was a vast and dim cement cavern, circular in shape, warm
and humid, and smelling of cat urine. All around were great big cages divided up by thick, green,
iron bars. A yellowish light filtered down from the skylights. Through the cage exits we could see
the vegetation of the surrounding island, flooded with sunlight. The cages were empty-save one:
Mahisha, our Bengal tiger patriarch, a lanky, hulking beast of 550 pounds, had been detained. As
soon as we stepped in, he loped up to the bars of his cage and set off a full-throated snarl, ears flat
against his skull and round eyes fixed on Babu. The sound was so loud and fierce it seemed to shake
the whole cat house. My knees started quaking. I got close to Mother. She was trembling, too. Even
Father seemed to pause and steady himself. Only Babu was indifferent to the outburst and to the
searing stare that bored into him like a drill. He had a tested trust in iron bars. Mahisha started
pacing to and fro against the limits of his cage.
Father turned to us. “What animal is this?” he bellowed above Mahisha’ s snarling.
“It’s a tiger,” Ravi and I answered in unison, obediently pointing out the blindingly obvious.
“Are tigers dangerous?”
“Yes, Father, tigers are dangerous.”
“Tigers are very dangerous,” Father shouted. “I want you to understand that you are never-
under any circumstances-to touch a tiger, to pet a tiger, to put your hands through the bars of a
cage, even to get close to a cage. Is that clear? Ravi?”
Ravi nodded vigorously.
“Piscine?”
I nodded even more vigorously.
He kept his eyes on me.
I nodded so hard I’m surprised my neck didn’t snap and my head fall to the floor.
I would like to say in my own defence that though I may have anthropomorphized the animals
till they spoke fluent English, the pheasants complaining in uppity British accents of their tea being
cold and the baboons planning their bank robbery getaway in the flat, menacing tones of American
gangsters, the fancy was always conscious. I quite deliberately dressed wild animals in tame
costumes of my imagination. But I never deluded myself as to the real nature of my playmates. My
poking nose had more sense than that. I don’t know where Father got the idea that his youngest son
was itching to step into a cage with a ferocious carnivore. But wherever the strange worry came
from-and Father was a worrier-he was clearly determined to rid himself of it that very morning.
“I’m going to show you how dangerous tigers are,” he continued. “I want you to remember
this lesson for the rest of your lives.”
He turned to Babu and nodded. Babu left. Malahisha’s eyes followed him and did not move
from the door he disappeared through. He returned a few seconds later carrying a goat with its legs
tied. Mother gripped me from behind. Mahihisha’s snarl turned into a growl deep in the throat.
Babu unlocked, opened, entered, closed and locked a cage next to the tiger’s cage. Bars and a
trapdoor separated the two. Immediately Mahisha was up against the dividing bars, pawing them.
To his growling he now added explosive, arrested woofs . Babu placed the goat on the floor; its
flanks were heaving violently, its tongue hung from its mouth, and its eyes were spinning orbs. He
untied its legs. The goat got to its feet. Babu exited the cage in the same careful way he had entered
it. The cage had two floors, one level with us, the other at the back, higher by about three feet, that
led outside to the island. The goat scrambled to this second level. Mahisha, now unconcerned with
Babu, paralleled the move in his cage in a fluid, effortless motion. He crouched and lay still, his
slowly moving tail the only sign of tension.
Babu stepped up to the trapdoor between the cages and started pulling it open. In anticipation
of satisfaction, Mahisha fell silent. I heard two things at that moment: Father saying “Never forget
this lesson” as he looked on grimly; and the bleating of the goat. It must have been bleating all
along, only we couldn’t hear it before.
I could feel Mother’ s hand pressed against my pounding heart.
The trapdoor resisted with sharp cries. Mahisha was beside himself-he looked as if he were
about to burst through the bars. He seemed to hesitate between staying where he was, at the place
where his prey was closest but most certainly out of reach, and moving to the ground level, further
away but where the trapdoor was located. He raised himself and started snarling again.
The goat started to jump. It jumped to amazing heights. I had no idea a goat could jump so
high. But the back of the cage was a high and smooth cement wall.
With sudden ease the trapdoor slid open. Silence fell again, except for bleating and the
click-click of the goat’s hooves against the floor.
A streak of black and orange flowed from one cage to the next.
Normally the big cats were not given food one day a week, to simulate conditions in the wild.
We found out later that Father had ordered that Mahisha not be fed for three days.
I don’t know if I saw blood before turning into Mother’s arms or if I daubed it on later, in my
memory, with a big brush. But I heard. It was enoiugh to scare the living vegetarian daylights out of
me. Mother bundled us out. We were in hysterics. She was incensed.
“How could you, Santosh? They’re children! They’ll be scarred for the rest of their lives.”
Her voice was hot and tremulous. I could see she had tears in her eyes. I felt better.
“Gita, my bird, it’s for their sake. What if Piscine had stuck his hand through the bars of the
cage one day to touch the pretty orange fur? Better a goat than him, no?”
His voice was soft, nearly a whisper. He looked contrite. He never called her “my bird” in
front of us.
We were huddled around her. He joined us. But the lesson was not over, though it was gentler
after that.
Father led us to the lions and leopards.
“Once there was a madman in Australia who was a black belt in karate. He wanted to prove
himself against the lions. He lost. Badly. The keepers found only half his body in the morning.”
“Yes, Father.”
The Himalayan bears and the sloth bears.
“One strike of the claws from these cuddly creatures and your innards will be scooped out and
splattered all over the ground.”
“Yes, Father.”
The hippos.
“With those soft, flabby mouths of theirs they’ll crush your body to a bloody pulp. On land
they can outrun you.”
“Yes, Father.”
The hyenas.
“The strongest jaws in nature. Don’t think that they’re cowardly or that they only eat carrion.
They’re not and they don’t! They’ll start eating you while you’re still alive.”
“Yes, Father.”
The orang-utans.
“As strong as ten men. They’ll break your bones as if they were twigs. I know some of them
were once pets and you played with them when they were small. But now they’re grown-up and
wild and unpredictable.”
“Yes, Father.”
The ostrich.
“Looks flustered and silly, doesn’t it? Listen up: it’s one of the most dangerous animals in a
zoo. Just one kick and your back is broken or your torso is crushed.”
“Yes, Father.”
The spotted deer.
“So pretty, aren’t they? If the male feels he has to, he'll charge you and those short little
antlers will pierce you like daggers.”
“Yes, Father.”
The Arabian camel.
“One slobbering bite and you’ve lost a chunk of flesh.”
“Yes, Father.”
The black swans.
“With their beaks they'll crack your skull. With their wings they’ll break your arms.”
“Yes, Father.”
The smaller birds.
“They’ll cut through your fingers with their beaks as if they were butter.”
“Yes, Father.”
The elephants.
“The most dangerous animal of all. More keepers and visitors are killed by elephants than by
any other animal in a zoo. A young elephant will most likely dismember you and trample your body
parts flat. That’s what happened to one poor lost soul in a European zoo who got into the elephant
house through a window. An older, more patient animal will squeeze you against a wall or sit on
you. Sounds funny-but think about it!”
“Yes, Father.”
“There are animals we haven’t stopped by. Don’t think they’re harmless. Life will defend
itself no matter how small it is. Every animal is ferocious and dangerous. It may not kill you, but it
will certainly injure you. It will scratch you and bite you, and you can look forward to a swollen,
pus-filled infection, a high fever and a ten-day stay in the hospital.”
“Yes, Father.”
We came to the guinea pigs, the only other animals besides Mahisha to have been starved at
Father’s orders, having been denied their previous evening’s meal. Father unlocked the cage. He
brought out a bag of feed from his pocket and emptied it on the floor.
“You see these guinea pigs?”
“Yes, Father.”
The creatures were trembling with weakness as they frantically nibbled their kernels of corn.
“Well...” He leaned down and scooped one up. "They’re not dangerous.” The other guinea
pigs scattered instantly.
Father laughed. He handed me the squealing guinea pig. He meant to end on a light note.
The guinea pig rested in my arms tensely. It was a young one. I went to the cage and carefully
lowered it to the floor. It rushed to its mother’s side. The only reason these guinea pigs weren’t
dangerous-didn’t draw blood with their teeth and claws-was that they were practically
domesticated. Otherwise, to grab a wild guinea pig with your bare hands would be like taking hold
of a knife by the blade.
The lesson was over. Ravi and I sulked and gave Father the cold shoulder for a week. Mother
ignored him too. When I went by the rhinoceros pit I fancied the rhinos’ heads were hung low with
sadness over the loss of one of their dear companions.
But what can you do when you love your father? Life goes on and you don’t touch tigers.
Except that now, for having accused Ravi of an unspecified crime he hadn’t committed, I was as
good as dead. In years subsequent, when he was in the mood to terrorize me, he would whisper to
me, “Just wait till we’re alone. You 're the next goat! ”
way we mean how our species’ excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey. More
specifically, we have in mind the people who feed fishhooks to the otters, razors to the bears, apples
with small nails in them to the elephants and hardware variations on the theme: ballpoint pens,
paper clips, safety pins, rubber bands, combs, coffee spoons, horseshoes, pieces of broken glass,
rings, brooches and other jewellery (and not just cheap plastic bangles: gold wedding bands, too),
drinking straws, plastic cutlery, ping-pong balls, tennis balls and so on. The obituary of zoo animals
that have died from being fed foreign bodies would include gorillas, bison, storks, rheas, ostriches,
seals, sea lions, big cats, bears, camels, elephants, monkeys, and most every variety of deer,
ruminant and songbird. Among zookeepers, Goliath’s death is famous; he was a bull elephant seal,
a great big venerable beast of two tons, star of his European zoo, loved by all visitors. He died of
internal bleeding after someone fed him a broken beer bottle.
The cruelty is often more active and direct. The literature contains reports on the many
torments inflicted upon zoo animals: a shoebill dying of shock after having its beak smashed with a
hammer; a moose stag losing its beard, along with a strip of flesh the size of an index finger, to a
visitor’s knife (this same moose was poisoned six months later); a monkey’s arm broken after
reaching out for proffered nuts; a deer’s antlers attacked with a hacksaw; a zebra stabbed with a
sword; and other assaults on other animals, with walking sticks, umbrellas, hairpins, knitting
needles, scissors and whatnot, often with an aim to taking an eye out or to injuring sexual parts.
Animals are also poisoned. And there are indecencies even more bizarre: onanists breaking a sweat
on monkeys, ponies, birds; a religious freak who cut a snake’s head off; a deranged man who took
to urinating in an elk’s mouth.
At Pondicherry we were relatively fortunate. We were spared the sadists who plied European
and American zoos. Nonetheless, our golden agouti vanished, stolen by someone who ate it, Father
suspected. Various birds-pheasants, peacocks, macaws-lost feathers to people greedy for their
beauty. We caught a man with a knife climbing into the pen for mouse deer; he said he was going to
punish evil Ravana (who in the Ramayana took the form of a deer when he kidnapped Sita, Rama’ s
consort). Another man was nabbed in the process of stealing a cobra. He was a snake charmer
whose own snake had died. Both were saved: the cobra from a life of servitude and bad music, and
the man from a possible death bite. We had to deal on occasion with stone throwers, who found the
animals too placid and wanted a reaction. And we had the lady whose sari was caught by a lion. She
spun like a yo-yo, choosing mortal embarrassment over mortal end. The thing was, it wasn’t even
an accident. She had leaned over, thrust her hand in the cage and waved the end of her sari in the
lion’s face, with what intent we never figured out. She was not injured; there were many fascinated
men who came to her assistance. Her flustered explanation to Father was, “Whoever heard of a lion
eating a cotton sari? I thought lions were carnivores.” Our worst troublemakers were the visitors
who gave food to the animals. Despite our vigilance. Dr. Atal, the zoo veterinarian, could tell by the
number of animals with digestive disturbances which had been the busy days at the zoo. He called
“tidbit-itis” the cases of enteritis or gastritis due to too many carbohydrates, especially sugar.
Sometimes we wished people had stuck to sweets. People have a notion that animals can eat
anything without the least consequence to their health. Not so. One of our sloth bears became
seriously ill with severe hemorrhagic enteritis after being given fish that had gone putrid by a man
who was convinced he was doing a good deed.
Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question:
Do You Know Which is the Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo?
An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at
the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
But I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more
dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every
habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthropomorphicus , the animal as seen through human
eyes. We’ve all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is “cute,” “friendly,”
“loving,” “devoted,” “merry,” “understanding.” These animals lie in ambush in every toy store and
children’s zoo. Countless stories are told of them. They are the pendants of those “vicious,”
“bloodthirsty,” “depraved” animals that inflame the ire of the maniacs I have just mentioned, who
vent their spite on them with walking sticks and umbrellas. In both cases we look at an animal and
see a mirror. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of
theologians but also of zoologists.
I learned the lesson that an animal is an animal, essentially and practically removed from us,
twice: once with Father and once with Richard Parker.
It was on a Sunday morning. I was quietly playing on my own. Father called out.
“Children, come here.”
Something was wrong. His tone of voice set off a small alarm bell in my head. I quickly
reviewed my conscience. It was clear. Ravi must be in trouble again. I wondered what he had done
this time. I walked into the living room. Mother was there. That was unusual. The disciplining of
children, like the tending of animals, was generally left to Father. Ravi walked in last, guilt written
all over his criminal face.
“Ravi, Piscine, I have a very important lesson for you today.”
“Oh really, is this necessary?” interrupted Mother. Her face was flushed.
I swallowed. If Mother, normally so unruffled, so calm, was worried, even upset, it meant we
were in serious trouble. I exchanged glances with Ravi.
“Yes, it is,” said Father, annoyed. “It may very well save their lives.”
Save our lives! It was no longer a small alarm bell that was ringing in my head-they were big
bells now, like the ones we heard from Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, not far from the zoo.
“But Piscine? He’s only eight,” Mother insisted.
“He’s the one who worries me the most.”
“I’m innocent!” I burst out. “It’s Ravi’s fault, whatever it is. He did it!”
“What?” said Ravi. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He gave me the evil eye.
“Shush!” said Father, raising his hand. He was looking at Mother. “Gita, you’ve seen Piscine.
He’s at that age when boys run around and poke their noses everywhere.”
Me? A run-arounder? An everywhere-nose-poker? Not so, not so! Defend me. Mother, defend
me, I implored in my heart. But she only sighed and nodded, a signal that the terrible business could
proceed.
“Come with me,” said Father.
We set out like prisoners off to their execution.
We left the house, went through the gate, entered the zoo. It was early and the zoo hadn’t
opened yet to the public. Animal keepers and groundskeepers were going about their work. I
noticed Sitaram, who oversaw the orang-utans, my favourite keeper. He paused to watch us go by.
We passed birds, bears, apes, monkeys, ungulates, the terrarium house, the rhinos, the elephants, the
giraffes.
We came to the big cats, our tigers, lions and leopards. Babu, their keeper, was waiting for us.
We went round and down the path, and he unlocked the door to the cat house, which was at the
centre of a moated island. We entered. It was a vast and dim cement cavern, circular in shape, warm
and humid, and smelling of cat urine. All around were great big cages divided up by thick, green,
iron bars. A yellowish light filtered down from the skylights. Through the cage exits we could see
the vegetation of the surrounding island, flooded with sunlight. The cages were empty-save one:
Mahisha, our Bengal tiger patriarch, a lanky, hulking beast of 550 pounds, had been detained. As
soon as we stepped in, he loped up to the bars of his cage and set off a full-throated snarl, ears flat
against his skull and round eyes fixed on Babu. The sound was so loud and fierce it seemed to shake
the whole cat house. My knees started quaking. I got close to Mother. She was trembling, too. Even
Father seemed to pause and steady himself. Only Babu was indifferent to the outburst and to the
searing stare that bored into him like a drill. He had a tested trust in iron bars. Mahisha started
pacing to and fro against the limits of his cage.
Father turned to us. “What animal is this?” he bellowed above Mahisha’ s snarling.
“It’s a tiger,” Ravi and I answered in unison, obediently pointing out the blindingly obvious.
“Are tigers dangerous?”
“Yes, Father, tigers are dangerous.”
“Tigers are very dangerous,” Father shouted. “I want you to understand that you are never-
under any circumstances-to touch a tiger, to pet a tiger, to put your hands through the bars of a
cage, even to get close to a cage. Is that clear? Ravi?”
Ravi nodded vigorously.
“Piscine?”
I nodded even more vigorously.
He kept his eyes on me.
I nodded so hard I’m surprised my neck didn’t snap and my head fall to the floor.
I would like to say in my own defence that though I may have anthropomorphized the animals
till they spoke fluent English, the pheasants complaining in uppity British accents of their tea being
cold and the baboons planning their bank robbery getaway in the flat, menacing tones of American
gangsters, the fancy was always conscious. I quite deliberately dressed wild animals in tame
costumes of my imagination. But I never deluded myself as to the real nature of my playmates. My
poking nose had more sense than that. I don’t know where Father got the idea that his youngest son
was itching to step into a cage with a ferocious carnivore. But wherever the strange worry came
from-and Father was a worrier-he was clearly determined to rid himself of it that very morning.
“I’m going to show you how dangerous tigers are,” he continued. “I want you to remember
this lesson for the rest of your lives.”
He turned to Babu and nodded. Babu left. Malahisha’s eyes followed him and did not move
from the door he disappeared through. He returned a few seconds later carrying a goat with its legs
tied. Mother gripped me from behind. Mahihisha’s snarl turned into a growl deep in the throat.
Babu unlocked, opened, entered, closed and locked a cage next to the tiger’s cage. Bars and a
trapdoor separated the two. Immediately Mahisha was up against the dividing bars, pawing them.
To his growling he now added explosive, arrested woofs . Babu placed the goat on the floor; its
flanks were heaving violently, its tongue hung from its mouth, and its eyes were spinning orbs. He
untied its legs. The goat got to its feet. Babu exited the cage in the same careful way he had entered
it. The cage had two floors, one level with us, the other at the back, higher by about three feet, that
led outside to the island. The goat scrambled to this second level. Mahisha, now unconcerned with
Babu, paralleled the move in his cage in a fluid, effortless motion. He crouched and lay still, his
slowly moving tail the only sign of tension.
Babu stepped up to the trapdoor between the cages and started pulling it open. In anticipation
of satisfaction, Mahisha fell silent. I heard two things at that moment: Father saying “Never forget
this lesson” as he looked on grimly; and the bleating of the goat. It must have been bleating all
along, only we couldn’t hear it before.
I could feel Mother’ s hand pressed against my pounding heart.
The trapdoor resisted with sharp cries. Mahisha was beside himself-he looked as if he were
about to burst through the bars. He seemed to hesitate between staying where he was, at the place
where his prey was closest but most certainly out of reach, and moving to the ground level, further
away but where the trapdoor was located. He raised himself and started snarling again.
The goat started to jump. It jumped to amazing heights. I had no idea a goat could jump so
high. But the back of the cage was a high and smooth cement wall.
With sudden ease the trapdoor slid open. Silence fell again, except for bleating and the
click-click of the goat’s hooves against the floor.
A streak of black and orange flowed from one cage to the next.
Normally the big cats were not given food one day a week, to simulate conditions in the wild.
We found out later that Father had ordered that Mahisha not be fed for three days.
I don’t know if I saw blood before turning into Mother’s arms or if I daubed it on later, in my
memory, with a big brush. But I heard. It was enoiugh to scare the living vegetarian daylights out of
me. Mother bundled us out. We were in hysterics. She was incensed.
“How could you, Santosh? They’re children! They’ll be scarred for the rest of their lives.”
Her voice was hot and tremulous. I could see she had tears in her eyes. I felt better.
“Gita, my bird, it’s for their sake. What if Piscine had stuck his hand through the bars of the
cage one day to touch the pretty orange fur? Better a goat than him, no?”
His voice was soft, nearly a whisper. He looked contrite. He never called her “my bird” in
front of us.
We were huddled around her. He joined us. But the lesson was not over, though it was gentler
after that.
Father led us to the lions and leopards.
“Once there was a madman in Australia who was a black belt in karate. He wanted to prove
himself against the lions. He lost. Badly. The keepers found only half his body in the morning.”
“Yes, Father.”
The Himalayan bears and the sloth bears.
“One strike of the claws from these cuddly creatures and your innards will be scooped out and
splattered all over the ground.”
“Yes, Father.”
The hippos.
“With those soft, flabby mouths of theirs they’ll crush your body to a bloody pulp. On land
they can outrun you.”
“Yes, Father.”
The hyenas.
“The strongest jaws in nature. Don’t think that they’re cowardly or that they only eat carrion.
They’re not and they don’t! They’ll start eating you while you’re still alive.”
“Yes, Father.”
The orang-utans.
“As strong as ten men. They’ll break your bones as if they were twigs. I know some of them
were once pets and you played with them when they were small. But now they’re grown-up and
wild and unpredictable.”
“Yes, Father.”
The ostrich.
“Looks flustered and silly, doesn’t it? Listen up: it’s one of the most dangerous animals in a
zoo. Just one kick and your back is broken or your torso is crushed.”
“Yes, Father.”
The spotted deer.
“So pretty, aren’t they? If the male feels he has to, he'll charge you and those short little
antlers will pierce you like daggers.”
“Yes, Father.”
The Arabian camel.
“One slobbering bite and you’ve lost a chunk of flesh.”
“Yes, Father.”
The black swans.
“With their beaks they'll crack your skull. With their wings they’ll break your arms.”
“Yes, Father.”
The smaller birds.
“They’ll cut through your fingers with their beaks as if they were butter.”
“Yes, Father.”
The elephants.
“The most dangerous animal of all. More keepers and visitors are killed by elephants than by
any other animal in a zoo. A young elephant will most likely dismember you and trample your body
parts flat. That’s what happened to one poor lost soul in a European zoo who got into the elephant
house through a window. An older, more patient animal will squeeze you against a wall or sit on
you. Sounds funny-but think about it!”
“Yes, Father.”
“There are animals we haven’t stopped by. Don’t think they’re harmless. Life will defend
itself no matter how small it is. Every animal is ferocious and dangerous. It may not kill you, but it
will certainly injure you. It will scratch you and bite you, and you can look forward to a swollen,
pus-filled infection, a high fever and a ten-day stay in the hospital.”
“Yes, Father.”
We came to the guinea pigs, the only other animals besides Mahisha to have been starved at
Father’s orders, having been denied their previous evening’s meal. Father unlocked the cage. He
brought out a bag of feed from his pocket and emptied it on the floor.
“You see these guinea pigs?”
“Yes, Father.”
The creatures were trembling with weakness as they frantically nibbled their kernels of corn.
“Well...” He leaned down and scooped one up. "They’re not dangerous.” The other guinea
pigs scattered instantly.
Father laughed. He handed me the squealing guinea pig. He meant to end on a light note.
The guinea pig rested in my arms tensely. It was a young one. I went to the cage and carefully
lowered it to the floor. It rushed to its mother’s side. The only reason these guinea pigs weren’t
dangerous-didn’t draw blood with their teeth and claws-was that they were practically
domesticated. Otherwise, to grab a wild guinea pig with your bare hands would be like taking hold
of a knife by the blade.
The lesson was over. Ravi and I sulked and gave Father the cold shoulder for a week. Mother
ignored him too. When I went by the rhinoceros pit I fancied the rhinos’ heads were hung low with
sadness over the loss of one of their dear companions.
But what can you do when you love your father? Life goes on and you don’t touch tigers.
Except that now, for having accused Ravi of an unspecified crime he hadn’t committed, I was as
good as dead. In years subsequent, when he was in the mood to terrorize me, he would whisper to
me, “Just wait till we’re alone. You 're the next goat! ”
Chapter 9
Getting animals used to the presence of humans is at the heart of the art and science of
zookeeping. The key aim is to diminish an animal’s flight distance, which is the minimum distance
at which an animal wants to keep a perceived enemy. A flamingo in the wild won’t mind you if you
stay more than three hundred yards away. Cross that limit and it becomes tense. Get even closer and
you trigger a flight reaction from which the bird will not cease until the three -hundred-yard limit is
set again, or until heart and lungs fail. Different animals have different flight distances and they
gauge them in different ways. Cats look, deer listen, bears smell. Giraffes will allow you to come to
within thirty yards of them if you are in a motor car, but will run if you are 150 yards away on foot.
Fiddler crabs scurry when you’re ten yards away; howler monkeys stir in their branches when
you’re at twenty; African buffaloes react at seventy-five .
Our tools for diminishing flight distance are the knowledge we have of an animal, the food
and shelter we provide, the protection we afford. When it works, the result is an emotionally stable,
stress-free wild animal that not only stays put, but is healthy, lives a very long time, eats without
fuss, behaves and socializes in natural ways and-the best sign-reproduces. I won’t say that our zoo
compared to the zoos of San Diego or Toronto or Berlin or Singapore, but you can’t keep a good
zookeeper down. Father was a natural. He made up for a lack of formal training with an intuitive
gift and a keen eye. He had a knack for looking at an animal and guessing what was on its mind. He
was attentive to his charges, and they, in return, multiplied, some to excess.
zookeeping. The key aim is to diminish an animal’s flight distance, which is the minimum distance
at which an animal wants to keep a perceived enemy. A flamingo in the wild won’t mind you if you
stay more than three hundred yards away. Cross that limit and it becomes tense. Get even closer and
you trigger a flight reaction from which the bird will not cease until the three -hundred-yard limit is
set again, or until heart and lungs fail. Different animals have different flight distances and they
gauge them in different ways. Cats look, deer listen, bears smell. Giraffes will allow you to come to
within thirty yards of them if you are in a motor car, but will run if you are 150 yards away on foot.
Fiddler crabs scurry when you’re ten yards away; howler monkeys stir in their branches when
you’re at twenty; African buffaloes react at seventy-five .
Our tools for diminishing flight distance are the knowledge we have of an animal, the food
and shelter we provide, the protection we afford. When it works, the result is an emotionally stable,
stress-free wild animal that not only stays put, but is healthy, lives a very long time, eats without
fuss, behaves and socializes in natural ways and-the best sign-reproduces. I won’t say that our zoo
compared to the zoos of San Diego or Toronto or Berlin or Singapore, but you can’t keep a good
zookeeper down. Father was a natural. He made up for a lack of formal training with an intuitive
gift and a keen eye. He had a knack for looking at an animal and guessing what was on its mind. He
was attentive to his charges, and they, in return, multiplied, some to excess.
Chapter 10
Yet there will always be animals that seek to escape from zoos. Animals that are kept in
unsuitable enclosures are the most obvious example. Every animal has particular habitat needs that
must be met. If its enclosure is too sunny or too wet or too empty, if its perch is too high or too
exposed, if the ground is too sandy, if there are too few branches to make a nest, if the food trough
is too low, if there is not enough mud to wallow in-and so many other ifs-then the animal will not
be at peace. It is not so much a question of constructing an imitation of conditions in the wild as of
getting to the essence of these conditions. Everything in an enclosure must be just right-in other
words, within the limits of the animal’s capacity to adapt. A plague upon bad zoos with bad
enclosures ! They bring all zoos into disrepute.
Wild animals that are captured when they are fully mature are another example of
escape-prone animals; often they are too set in their ways to reconstruct their subjective worlds and
adapt to a new environment.
But even animals that were bred in zoos and have never known the wild, that are perfectly
adapted to their enclosures and feel no tension in the presence of humans, will have moments of
excitement that push them to seek to escape . All living things contain a measure of madness that
moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and
parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that
animals don’t escape to somewhere but from something . Something within their territory has
frightened them-the intrusion of an enemy, the assault of a dominant animal, a startling noise-and
set off a flight reaction. The animal flees, or tries to. I was surprised to read at the Toronto Zoo-a
very fine zoo, I might add-that leopards can jump eighteen feet straight up. Our leopard enclosure
in Pondicherry had a wall sixteen feet high at the back; I surmise that Rosie and Copycat never
jumped out not because of constitutional weakness but simply because they had no reason to.
Animals that escape go from the known into the unknown-and if there is one thing an animal hates
above all else, it is the unknown. Escaping animals usually hide in the very first place they find that
gives them a sense of security, and they are dangerous only to those who happen to get between
them and their reckoned safe spot.
unsuitable enclosures are the most obvious example. Every animal has particular habitat needs that
must be met. If its enclosure is too sunny or too wet or too empty, if its perch is too high or too
exposed, if the ground is too sandy, if there are too few branches to make a nest, if the food trough
is too low, if there is not enough mud to wallow in-and so many other ifs-then the animal will not
be at peace. It is not so much a question of constructing an imitation of conditions in the wild as of
getting to the essence of these conditions. Everything in an enclosure must be just right-in other
words, within the limits of the animal’s capacity to adapt. A plague upon bad zoos with bad
enclosures ! They bring all zoos into disrepute.
Wild animals that are captured when they are fully mature are another example of
escape-prone animals; often they are too set in their ways to reconstruct their subjective worlds and
adapt to a new environment.
But even animals that were bred in zoos and have never known the wild, that are perfectly
adapted to their enclosures and feel no tension in the presence of humans, will have moments of
excitement that push them to seek to escape . All living things contain a measure of madness that
moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and
parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that
animals don’t escape to somewhere but from something . Something within their territory has
frightened them-the intrusion of an enemy, the assault of a dominant animal, a startling noise-and
set off a flight reaction. The animal flees, or tries to. I was surprised to read at the Toronto Zoo-a
very fine zoo, I might add-that leopards can jump eighteen feet straight up. Our leopard enclosure
in Pondicherry had a wall sixteen feet high at the back; I surmise that Rosie and Copycat never
jumped out not because of constitutional weakness but simply because they had no reason to.
Animals that escape go from the known into the unknown-and if there is one thing an animal hates
above all else, it is the unknown. Escaping animals usually hide in the very first place they find that
gives them a sense of security, and they are dangerous only to those who happen to get between
them and their reckoned safe spot.
Chapter 11
Consider the case of the female black leopard that escaped from the Zurich Zoo in the winter
of 1933. She was new to the zoo and seemed to get along with the male leopard. But various paw
injuries hinted at matrimonial strife. Before any decision could be taken about what to do, she
squeezed through a break in the roof bars of her cage and vanished in the night. The discovery that a
wild carnivore was tree in their midst created an uproar among the citizens of Zurich. Traps were
set and hunting dogs were let loose. They only rid the canton of its few half-wild dogs. Not a trace
of the leopard was found for ten weeks . Finally, a casual labourer came upon it under a barn
twenty-five miles away and shot it. Remains of roe-deer were found nearby. That a big, black,
tropical cat managed to survive for more than two months in a Swiss winter without being seen by
anyone, let alone attacking anyone, speaks plainly to the fact that escaped zoo animals are not
dangerous absconding criminals but simply wild creatures seeking to fit in .
And this case is just one among many. If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside
down and shook it, you would be amazed at the animals that would fall out. It would pour more
than cats and dogs, I tell you. Boa constrictors, Komodo dragons, crocodiles, piranhas, ostriches,
wolves, lynx, wallabies, manatees, porcupines, orang-utans, wild boar-that’s the sort of rainfall you
could expect on your umbrella. And they expected to find-ha! In the middle of a Mexican tropical
jungle, imagine! Ha! Ha! It’s laughable, simply laughable. What were they thinking?
of 1933. She was new to the zoo and seemed to get along with the male leopard. But various paw
injuries hinted at matrimonial strife. Before any decision could be taken about what to do, she
squeezed through a break in the roof bars of her cage and vanished in the night. The discovery that a
wild carnivore was tree in their midst created an uproar among the citizens of Zurich. Traps were
set and hunting dogs were let loose. They only rid the canton of its few half-wild dogs. Not a trace
of the leopard was found for ten weeks . Finally, a casual labourer came upon it under a barn
twenty-five miles away and shot it. Remains of roe-deer were found nearby. That a big, black,
tropical cat managed to survive for more than two months in a Swiss winter without being seen by
anyone, let alone attacking anyone, speaks plainly to the fact that escaped zoo animals are not
dangerous absconding criminals but simply wild creatures seeking to fit in .
And this case is just one among many. If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside
down and shook it, you would be amazed at the animals that would fall out. It would pour more
than cats and dogs, I tell you. Boa constrictors, Komodo dragons, crocodiles, piranhas, ostriches,
wolves, lynx, wallabies, manatees, porcupines, orang-utans, wild boar-that’s the sort of rainfall you
could expect on your umbrella. And they expected to find-ha! In the middle of a Mexican tropical
jungle, imagine! Ha! Ha! It’s laughable, simply laughable. What were they thinking?
Chapter 12
At times he gets agitated. It’s nothing I say (I say very little). It's his own story that
does it. Memory is an ocean and he bobs on its surface. I worry that he’ll want to stop.
But he wants to tell me his story. He goes on. After all these years, Richard Parker still
preys on his mind.
He’s a sweet man. Every time I visit he prepares a South Indian vegetarian feast. I
told him I like spicy food . I don’t know why I said such a stupid thing. It’s a complete
lie. I add dollop of yogurt after dollop of yogurt. Nothing doing. Each time it’s the same:
my taste buds shrivel up and die, my skin goes beet red, my eyes well up with tears, my
head feels like a house on fire, and my digestive tract starts to twist and groan in agony
like a boa constrictor that has swallowed a lawn mower.
does it. Memory is an ocean and he bobs on its surface. I worry that he’ll want to stop.
But he wants to tell me his story. He goes on. After all these years, Richard Parker still
preys on his mind.
He’s a sweet man. Every time I visit he prepares a South Indian vegetarian feast. I
told him I like spicy food . I don’t know why I said such a stupid thing. It’s a complete
lie. I add dollop of yogurt after dollop of yogurt. Nothing doing. Each time it’s the same:
my taste buds shrivel up and die, my skin goes beet red, my eyes well up with tears, my
head feels like a house on fire, and my digestive tract starts to twist and groan in agony
like a boa constrictor that has swallowed a lawn mower.
Chapter 13
So you see, if you fall into a lion’s pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not
because it’s hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it’s bloodthirsty, but because
you’ve invaded its territory.
As an aside, that is why a circus trainer must always enter the lion ring first, and in full sight
of the lions. In doing so, he establishes that the ring is his territory, not theirs, a notion that he
reinforces by shouting, by stomping about, by snapping his whip. The lions are impressed. Their
disadvantage weighs heavily on them. Notice how they come in: mighty predators though they are,
“kings of beasts,” they crawl in with their tails low and they keep to the edges of the ring, which is
always round so that they have nowhere to hide. They are in the presence of a strongly dominant
male, a super-alpha male, and they must submit to his dominance rituals. So they open their jaws
wide, they sit up, they jump through paper-covered hoops, they crawl through tubes, they walk
backwards, they roll over. “He's a queer one,” they think dimly. “Never seen a top lion like him.
But he runs a good pride. The larder’s always full and-let’s be honest, mates-his antics keep us
busy. Napping all the time does get a bit boring. At least we’re not riding bicycles like the brown
bears or catching flying plates like the chimps.”
Only the trainer better make sure he always remains super alpha. He will pay dearly if he
unwittingly slips to beta. Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of
social insecurity . The animal in front of you must know where it stands, whether above you or
below you. Social rank is central to how it leads its life. Rank determines whom it can associate
with and how; where and when it can eat; where it can rest; where it can drink; and so on. Until it
knows its rank for certain, the animal lives a life of unbearable anarchy. It remains nervous, jumpy,
dangerous. Luckily for the circus trainer, decisions about social rank among higher animals are not
always based on brute force. Hediger (1950) says, “When two creatures meet, the one that is able to
intimidate its opponent is recognized as socially superior, so that a social decision does not always
depend on a fight; an encounter in some circumstances may be enough.” Words of a wise animal
man. Mr. Hediger was for many years a zoo director, first of the Basel Zoo and then of the Zurich
Zoo. He was a man well versed in the ways of animals.
It’s a question of brain over brawn. The nature of the circus trainer’s ascendancy is
psychological. Foreign surroundings, the trainer’s erect posture, calm demeanour, steady gaze,
fearless step forward, strange roar (for example, the snapping of a whip or the blowing of a
whistle)-these are so many factors that will fill the animal’s mind with doubt and fear, and make
clear to it where it stands, the very thing it wants to know. Satisfied, Number Two will back down
and Number One can turn to the audience and shout, “Let the show go on! And now, ladies and
gentlemen, through hoops of real fire. .
because it’s hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it’s bloodthirsty, but because
you’ve invaded its territory.
As an aside, that is why a circus trainer must always enter the lion ring first, and in full sight
of the lions. In doing so, he establishes that the ring is his territory, not theirs, a notion that he
reinforces by shouting, by stomping about, by snapping his whip. The lions are impressed. Their
disadvantage weighs heavily on them. Notice how they come in: mighty predators though they are,
“kings of beasts,” they crawl in with their tails low and they keep to the edges of the ring, which is
always round so that they have nowhere to hide. They are in the presence of a strongly dominant
male, a super-alpha male, and they must submit to his dominance rituals. So they open their jaws
wide, they sit up, they jump through paper-covered hoops, they crawl through tubes, they walk
backwards, they roll over. “He's a queer one,” they think dimly. “Never seen a top lion like him.
But he runs a good pride. The larder’s always full and-let’s be honest, mates-his antics keep us
busy. Napping all the time does get a bit boring. At least we’re not riding bicycles like the brown
bears or catching flying plates like the chimps.”
Only the trainer better make sure he always remains super alpha. He will pay dearly if he
unwittingly slips to beta. Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of
social insecurity . The animal in front of you must know where it stands, whether above you or
below you. Social rank is central to how it leads its life. Rank determines whom it can associate
with and how; where and when it can eat; where it can rest; where it can drink; and so on. Until it
knows its rank for certain, the animal lives a life of unbearable anarchy. It remains nervous, jumpy,
dangerous. Luckily for the circus trainer, decisions about social rank among higher animals are not
always based on brute force. Hediger (1950) says, “When two creatures meet, the one that is able to
intimidate its opponent is recognized as socially superior, so that a social decision does not always
depend on a fight; an encounter in some circumstances may be enough.” Words of a wise animal
man. Mr. Hediger was for many years a zoo director, first of the Basel Zoo and then of the Zurich
Zoo. He was a man well versed in the ways of animals.
It’s a question of brain over brawn. The nature of the circus trainer’s ascendancy is
psychological. Foreign surroundings, the trainer’s erect posture, calm demeanour, steady gaze,
fearless step forward, strange roar (for example, the snapping of a whip or the blowing of a
whistle)-these are so many factors that will fill the animal’s mind with doubt and fear, and make
clear to it where it stands, the very thing it wants to know. Satisfied, Number Two will back down
and Number One can turn to the audience and shout, “Let the show go on! And now, ladies and
gentlemen, through hoops of real fire. .
Chapter 14
It is interesting to note that the lion that is the most amenable to the circus trainer’s tricks is
the one with the lowest social standing in the pride, the omega animal. It has the most to gain from a
close relationship with the super-alpha trainer. It is not only a matter of extra treats. A close
relationship will also mean protection from the other members of the pride. It is this compliant
animal, to the public no different from the others in size and apparent ferocity, that will be the star
of the show, while the trainer leaves the beta and gamma lions, more cantankerous subordinates,
sitting on their colourful barrels on the edge of the ring .
The same is true of other circus animals and is also seen in zoos. Socially inferior animals are
the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove
to be the ones most faithful to them, most in need of their company, least likely to challenge them
or be difficult. The phenomenon has been observed with big cats, bison, deer, wild sheep, monkeys
and many other animals. It is a fact commonly known in the trade.
the one with the lowest social standing in the pride, the omega animal. It has the most to gain from a
close relationship with the super-alpha trainer. It is not only a matter of extra treats. A close
relationship will also mean protection from the other members of the pride. It is this compliant
animal, to the public no different from the others in size and apparent ferocity, that will be the star
of the show, while the trainer leaves the beta and gamma lions, more cantankerous subordinates,
sitting on their colourful barrels on the edge of the ring .
The same is true of other circus animals and is also seen in zoos. Socially inferior animals are
the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove
to be the ones most faithful to them, most in need of their company, least likely to challenge them
or be difficult. The phenomenon has been observed with big cats, bison, deer, wild sheep, monkeys
and many other animals. It is a fact commonly known in the trade.
Chapter 15
His house is a temple. In the entrance hall hangs a framed picture of Ganesha, he
of the elephant head. He sits facing out-rosy-coloured, pot-bellied, crowned and smiling-
three hands holding various objects, the fourth held palm out in blessing and in greeting.
He is the lord overcomer of obstacles, the god of good luck, the god of wisdom, the
patron of learning. Simpatico in the highest. He brings a smile to my lips. At his feet is an
attentive rat. His vehicle. Because when Lord Ganesha travels, he travels atop a rat. On
the wall opposite the picture is a plain wooden Cross.
In the living room, on a table next to the sofa, there is a small framed picture of the
Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, flowers tumbling from her open mantle. Next to it is a framed
photo of the black-robed Kaaba, holiest sanctum of Islam, surrounded by a
ten-thousandfold swirl of the faithful. On the television set is a brass statue of Shiva as
Nataraja, the cosmic lord of the dance, who controls the motions of the universe and the
flow of time. He dances on the demon of ignorance, his four arms held out in
choreographic gesture, one foot on the demon’s back, the other lifted in the air. When
Nataraja brings this foot down, they say time will stop.
There is a shrine in the kitchen. It is set in a cupboard whose door he has replaced
with a fretwork arch. The arch partly hides the yellow light bulb that in the evenings
lights up the shrine. Two pictures rest behind a small altar: to the side, Ganesha again,
and in the centre, in a larger frame, smiling and blue-skinned, Krishna playing the flute .
Both have smears of red and yellow powder on the glass over their foreheads. In a copper
dish on the altar are three silver murtis, representations. He identifies them for me with a
pointed finger: Lakshmi; Shakti, the mother goddess, in the form of Parvati; and Krishna,
this time as a playful baby crawling on all fours. In between the goddesses is a stone
Shiva yoni linga, which looks like half an avocado with a phallic stump rising from its
centre, a Hindu symbol representing the male and female energies of the universe. To one
side of the dish is a small conch shell set on a pedestal; to the other, a small silver
handbell. Grains of rice lie about, as well as a flower just beginning to wilt. Many of
these items are anointed with dabs of yellow and red.
On the shelf below are various articles of devotion: a beaker full of water; a copper
spoon; a lamp with a wick coiled in oil; sticks of incense; and small bowls full of red
powder, yellow powder, grains of rice and lumps of sugar.
There is another Virgin Mary in the dining room.
Upstairs in his office there is a brass Ganesha sitting cross-legged next to the
computer, a wooden Christ on the Cross from Brazil on a wall, and a green prayer rug in
a corner. The Christ is expressive-He suffers. The prayer rug lies in its own clear space.
Next to it, on a low bookstand, is a book covered by a cloth. At the centre of the cloth is a
single Arabic word, intricately woven, four letters: an alif , two lams and a ha . The
word God in Arabic.
The book on the bedside table is a Bible.
of the elephant head. He sits facing out-rosy-coloured, pot-bellied, crowned and smiling-
three hands holding various objects, the fourth held palm out in blessing and in greeting.
He is the lord overcomer of obstacles, the god of good luck, the god of wisdom, the
patron of learning. Simpatico in the highest. He brings a smile to my lips. At his feet is an
attentive rat. His vehicle. Because when Lord Ganesha travels, he travels atop a rat. On
the wall opposite the picture is a plain wooden Cross.
In the living room, on a table next to the sofa, there is a small framed picture of the
Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, flowers tumbling from her open mantle. Next to it is a framed
photo of the black-robed Kaaba, holiest sanctum of Islam, surrounded by a
ten-thousandfold swirl of the faithful. On the television set is a brass statue of Shiva as
Nataraja, the cosmic lord of the dance, who controls the motions of the universe and the
flow of time. He dances on the demon of ignorance, his four arms held out in
choreographic gesture, one foot on the demon’s back, the other lifted in the air. When
Nataraja brings this foot down, they say time will stop.
There is a shrine in the kitchen. It is set in a cupboard whose door he has replaced
with a fretwork arch. The arch partly hides the yellow light bulb that in the evenings
lights up the shrine. Two pictures rest behind a small altar: to the side, Ganesha again,
and in the centre, in a larger frame, smiling and blue-skinned, Krishna playing the flute .
Both have smears of red and yellow powder on the glass over their foreheads. In a copper
dish on the altar are three silver murtis, representations. He identifies them for me with a
pointed finger: Lakshmi; Shakti, the mother goddess, in the form of Parvati; and Krishna,
this time as a playful baby crawling on all fours. In between the goddesses is a stone
Shiva yoni linga, which looks like half an avocado with a phallic stump rising from its
centre, a Hindu symbol representing the male and female energies of the universe. To one
side of the dish is a small conch shell set on a pedestal; to the other, a small silver
handbell. Grains of rice lie about, as well as a flower just beginning to wilt. Many of
these items are anointed with dabs of yellow and red.
On the shelf below are various articles of devotion: a beaker full of water; a copper
spoon; a lamp with a wick coiled in oil; sticks of incense; and small bowls full of red
powder, yellow powder, grains of rice and lumps of sugar.
There is another Virgin Mary in the dining room.
Upstairs in his office there is a brass Ganesha sitting cross-legged next to the
computer, a wooden Christ on the Cross from Brazil on a wall, and a green prayer rug in
a corner. The Christ is expressive-He suffers. The prayer rug lies in its own clear space.
Next to it, on a low bookstand, is a book covered by a cloth. At the centre of the cloth is a
single Arabic word, intricately woven, four letters: an alif , two lams and a ha . The
word God in Arabic.
The book on the bedside table is a Bible.
Chapter 16
We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we-in limbo, without religion, until some figure
introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is
usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life’s way. That
was not my case. The figure in question for me was an older sister of Mother’s, of a more
traditional mind, who brought me to a temple when I was a small baby. Auntie Rohini was
delighted to meet her newborn nephew and thought she would include Mother Goddess in the
delight. “It will be his symbolic first outing,” she said. It’s a samskara!” Symbolic indeed. We were
in Madurai; I was the fresh veteran of a seven-hour train journey. No matter. Off we went on this
Hindu rite of passage, Mother carrying me. Auntie propelling her. I have no conscious memory of
this first go-around in a temple, but some smell of incense, some play of light and shadow, some
flame, some burst of colour, something of the sultriness and mystery of the place must have stayed
with me. A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left to
germinate. It has never stopped growing since that day.
I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow
turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the
clanging of bells to announce one’s arrival to God, because of the whine of the reedy nadaswaram
and the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors down dark corridors
pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of arati lamps
circling in the darkness, because of bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing
around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories, because of foreheads carrying,
variously signified, the same word-faith . I became loyal to these sense impressions even before I
knew what they meant or what they were for. It is my heart that commands me so. I feel at home in
a Hindu temple. I am aware of Presence, not personal the way we usually feel presence, but
something larger. My heart still skips a beat when I catch sight of the murti, of God Residing, in the
inner sanctum of a temple. Truly I am in a sacred cosmic womb, a place where everything is born,
and it is my sweet luck to behold its living core. My hands naturally come together in reverent
worship. I hunger for prasad, that sugary offering to God that comes back to us as a sanctified treat.
My palms need to feel the heat of a hallowed flame whose blessing I bring to my eyes and forehead.
But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for. Here too I
am a Hindu. The universe makes sense to me through Hindu eyes. There is Brahman, the world
soul, the sustaining frame upon which is woven, warp and weft, the cloth of being, with all its
decorative elements of space and time. There is Brahman nirguna, without qualities, which lies
beyond understanding, beyond description, beyond approach; with our poor words we sew a suit for
it-One, Truth, Unity, Absolute, Ultimate Reality, Ground of Being-and try to make it fit, but
Brahman nirguna always bursts the seams . We are left speechless. But there is also Brahman
saguna, with qualities, where the suit fits. Now we call it Shiva, Krishna, Shakti, Ganesha; we can
approach it with some understanding; we can discern certain attributes-loving, merciful,
frightening;-and we feel the gentle pull of relationship. Brahman saguna is Brahman made manifest
to our limited senses, Brahman expressed not only in gods but in humans, animals, trees, in a
handful of earth, for everything has a trace of the divine in it. The truth of life is that Brahman is no
different from atman, the spiritual force within us, what you might call the soul. The individual soul
touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe
beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the
same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite. If you ask me how Brahman
and atman relate precisely, I would say in the same way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
relate: mysteriously. But one thing is clear: atman seeks to realize Brahman, to be united with the
Absolute, and it travels in this life on a pilgrimage where it is born and dies, and is born again and
dies again, and again, and again, until it manages to shed the sheaths that imprison it here below.
The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of
Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.
This, in a holy nutshell, is Hinduism, and I have been a Hindu all my life. With its notions in
mind I see my place in the universe.
But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists! I am reminded of a
story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with
him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and
crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster-the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet
lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment
the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he
vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous with God.
I know a woman here in Toronto who is very dear to my heart. She was my foster mother. I
call her Auntieji and she likes that. She is Quebecoise. Though she has lived in Toronto for over
thirty years, her French-speaking mind still slips on occasion on the understanding of English
sounds. And so, when she first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn’t hear right. She heard “Hairless
Christians,” and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that
in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians,
just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their
devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.
introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is
usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life’s way. That
was not my case. The figure in question for me was an older sister of Mother’s, of a more
traditional mind, who brought me to a temple when I was a small baby. Auntie Rohini was
delighted to meet her newborn nephew and thought she would include Mother Goddess in the
delight. “It will be his symbolic first outing,” she said. It’s a samskara!” Symbolic indeed. We were
in Madurai; I was the fresh veteran of a seven-hour train journey. No matter. Off we went on this
Hindu rite of passage, Mother carrying me. Auntie propelling her. I have no conscious memory of
this first go-around in a temple, but some smell of incense, some play of light and shadow, some
flame, some burst of colour, something of the sultriness and mystery of the place must have stayed
with me. A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left to
germinate. It has never stopped growing since that day.
I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow
turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the
clanging of bells to announce one’s arrival to God, because of the whine of the reedy nadaswaram
and the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors down dark corridors
pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of arati lamps
circling in the darkness, because of bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing
around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories, because of foreheads carrying,
variously signified, the same word-faith . I became loyal to these sense impressions even before I
knew what they meant or what they were for. It is my heart that commands me so. I feel at home in
a Hindu temple. I am aware of Presence, not personal the way we usually feel presence, but
something larger. My heart still skips a beat when I catch sight of the murti, of God Residing, in the
inner sanctum of a temple. Truly I am in a sacred cosmic womb, a place where everything is born,
and it is my sweet luck to behold its living core. My hands naturally come together in reverent
worship. I hunger for prasad, that sugary offering to God that comes back to us as a sanctified treat.
My palms need to feel the heat of a hallowed flame whose blessing I bring to my eyes and forehead.
But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for. Here too I
am a Hindu. The universe makes sense to me through Hindu eyes. There is Brahman, the world
soul, the sustaining frame upon which is woven, warp and weft, the cloth of being, with all its
decorative elements of space and time. There is Brahman nirguna, without qualities, which lies
beyond understanding, beyond description, beyond approach; with our poor words we sew a suit for
it-One, Truth, Unity, Absolute, Ultimate Reality, Ground of Being-and try to make it fit, but
Brahman nirguna always bursts the seams . We are left speechless. But there is also Brahman
saguna, with qualities, where the suit fits. Now we call it Shiva, Krishna, Shakti, Ganesha; we can
approach it with some understanding; we can discern certain attributes-loving, merciful,
frightening;-and we feel the gentle pull of relationship. Brahman saguna is Brahman made manifest
to our limited senses, Brahman expressed not only in gods but in humans, animals, trees, in a
handful of earth, for everything has a trace of the divine in it. The truth of life is that Brahman is no
different from atman, the spiritual force within us, what you might call the soul. The individual soul
touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe
beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the
same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite. If you ask me how Brahman
and atman relate precisely, I would say in the same way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
relate: mysteriously. But one thing is clear: atman seeks to realize Brahman, to be united with the
Absolute, and it travels in this life on a pilgrimage where it is born and dies, and is born again and
dies again, and again, and again, until it manages to shed the sheaths that imprison it here below.
The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of
Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.
This, in a holy nutshell, is Hinduism, and I have been a Hindu all my life. With its notions in
mind I see my place in the universe.
But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists! I am reminded of a
story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with
him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and
crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster-the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet
lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment
the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he
vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous with God.
I know a woman here in Toronto who is very dear to my heart. She was my foster mother. I
call her Auntieji and she likes that. She is Quebecoise. Though she has lived in Toronto for over
thirty years, her French-speaking mind still slips on occasion on the understanding of English
sounds. And so, when she first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn’t hear right. She heard “Hairless
Christians,” and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that
in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians,
just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their
devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.
Chapter 17
First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. I owe to
Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination, those towns and rivers, battlefields
and forests, holy mountains and deep seas where gods, saints, villains and ordinary people rub
shoulders, and, in doing so, define who and why we are. I first heard of the tremendous, cosmic
might of loving kindness in this Hindu land. It was Lord Krishna speaking. I heard him, and I
followed him. And in his wisdom and perfect love. Lord Krishna led me to meet one man.
I was fourteen years old-and a well-content Hindu on a holiday-when I met Jesus Christ.
It was not often that Father took time off from the zoo, but one of the times he did we went to
Munnar, just over in Kerala. Munnar is a small hill station surrounded by some of the highest tea
estates in the world. It was early May and the monsoon hadn’t come yet. The plains of Tamil Nadu
were beastly hot. We made it to Munnar after a winding, five-hour car ride from Madurai. The
coolness was as pleasing as having mint in your mouth. We did the tourist thing. We visited a Tata
tea factory. We enjoyed a boat ride on a lake. We toured a cattle-breeding centre. We fed salt to
some Nilgiri tahrs-a species of wild goat-in a national park. (“We have some in our zoo. You
should come to Pondicherry,” said Father to some Swiss tourists.) Ravi and I went for walks in the
tea estates near town. It was all an excuse to keep our lethargy a little busy. By late afternoon Father
and Mother were as settled in the tea room of our comfortable hotel as two cats sunning themselves
at a window. Mother read while Father chatted with fellow guests.
There are three hills within Munnar. They don’t bear comparison with the tall hills—
mountains, you might call them-that surround the town, but I noticed the first morning, as we were
having breakfast, that they did stand out in one way: on each stood a Godhouse. The hill on the
right, across the river from the hotel, had a Hindu temple high on its side; the hill in the middle,
further away, held up a mosque; while the hill on the left was crowned with a Christian church.
On our fourth day in Munnar, as the afternoon was coming to an end, I stood on the hill on the
left. Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church-and I wasn’t
about to dare the deed now. I knew very little about the religion. It had a reputation for few gods
and great violence. But good schools. I walked around the church. It was a building unremittingly
unrevealing of what it held inside, with thick, featureless walls pale blue in colour and high, narrow
windows impossible to look in through. A fortress.
I came upon the rectory. The door was open. I hid around a corner to look upon the scene. To
the left of the door was a small board with the words Parish Priest and Assistant Priest on it. Next
to each was a small sliding block. Both the priest and his assistant were IN, the board informed me
in gold letters, which I could plainly see. One priest was working in his office, his back turned to
the bay windows, while the other was seated on a bench at a round table in the large vestibule that
evidently functioned as a room for receiving visitors. He sat facing the door and the windows, a
book in his hands, a Bible I presumed. He read a little, looked up, read a little more, looked up
again. It was done in a way that was leisurely, yet alert and composed. After some minutes, he
closed the book and put it aside. He folded his hands together on the table and sat there, his
expression serene, showing neither expectation nor resignation.
The vestibule had clean, white walls; the table and benches were of dark wood; and the priest
was dressed in a white cassock-it was all neat, plain, simple. I was filled with a sense of peace. But
more than the setting, what arrested me was my intuitive understanding that he was there-open,
patient-in case someone, anyone, should want to talk to him; a problem of the soul, a heaviness of
the heart, a darkness of the conscience, he would listen with love. He was a man whose profession it
was to love, and he would offer comfort and guidance to the best of his ability.
I was moved. What I had before my eyes stole into my heart and thrilled me.
He got up. I thought he might slide his block over, but he didn’t. He retreated further into the
rectory, that’ s all, leaving the door between the vestibule and the next room as open as the outside
door. I noted this, how both doors were wide open. Clearly, he and his colleague were still
available.
I walked away and I dared. I entered the church. My stomach was in knots. I was terrified I
would meet a Christian who would shout at me, “What are you doing here? How dare you enter this
sacred place, you defiler? Get out, right now!”
There was no one. And little to be understood. I advanced and observed the inner sanctum.
There was a painting. Was this the murti? Something about a human sacrifice. An angry god who
had to be appeased with blood. Dazed women staring up in the air and fat babies with tiny wings
flying about. A charismatic bird. Which one was the god? To the side of the sanctum was a painted
wooden sculpture. The victim again, bruised and bleeding in bold colours. I stared at his knees.
They were badly scraped. The pink skin was peeled back and looked like the petals of a flower,
revealing kneecaps that were fire-engine red. It was hard to connect this torture scene with the priest
in the rectory.
The next day, at around the same time, I let myself IN.
Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily. My
experience with Father Martin was not at all like that. He was very kind. He served me tea and
biscuits in a tea set that tinkled and rattled at every touch; he treated me like a grown-up; and he
told me a story. Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.
And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it’ s
God’s Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, “Piscine, a lion slipped into
the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week
two of them ate the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who’s to
say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something
must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to
them.”
“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”
“Hallelujah, my son.”
“Hallelujah, Father.”
What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology.
I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying. Surely this religion had more
than one story in its bag-religions abound with stories. But Father Martin made me understand that
the stories that came before it-and there were many-were simply prologue to the Christians. Their
religion had one Story, and to it they came back again and again, over and over. It was story enough
for them.
I was quiet that evening at the hotel.
That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their
fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers and usurpers. What is the Ramayana but the account of one
long, bad day for Rama? Adversity, yes. Reversals of fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation
? Death ? I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked,
dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified-and at the hands of mere humans, to boot .
I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying. Brahman Revealed did not go for death. Devils and monsters
did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions-that’s what they were there for. Matter, too, fell
away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It’s wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in
one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount
to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake. If God on the Cross is God
shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the
Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God,
even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be
tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be
real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty
what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?
Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.
And what about this Son’s deportment? There is the story of baby Krishna, wrongly accused
by his friends of eating a bit of dirt. His foster mother, Yashoda, comes up to him with a wagging
finger. “You shouldn’t eat dirt, you naughty boy,” she scolds him. “But I haven’t,” says the
unchallenged lord of all and everything, in sport disguised as a frightened human child. “Tut! Tut!
Open your mouth,” orders Yashoda. Krishna does as he is told. He opens his mouth. Yashoda
gasps. She sees in Krishna’s mouth the whole complete entire timeless universe, all the stars and
planets of space and the distance between them, all the lands and seas of the earth and the life in
them; she sees all the days of yesterday and all the days of tomorrow; she sees all ideas and all
emotions, all pity and all hope, and the three strands of matter; not a pebble, candle, creature,
village or galaxy is missing, including herself and every bit of dirt in its truthful place. “My Lord,
you can close your mouth,” she says reverently.
There is the story of Vishnu incarnated as Vamana the dwarf. He asks of demon king Bali
only as much land as he can cover in three strides. Bali laughs at this runt of a suitor and his puny
request. He consents. Immediately Vishnu takes on his full cosmic size. With one stride he covers
the earth, with the second the heavens, and with the third he boots Bali into the netherworld.
Even Rama, that most human of avatars, who had to be reminded of his divinity when he
grew long-faced over the struggle to get Sita, his wife, back from Ravana, evil king of Lanka, was
no slouch. No spindly cross would have kept him down. When push came to shove, he transcended
his limited human frame with strength no man could have and weapons no man could handle.
That is God as God should be. With shine and power and might. Such as can rescue and save
and put down evil.
This Son, on the other hand, who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is
sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put up with followers who don’t get it
and opponents who don’t respect Him- what kind of a god is that? It’s a god on too human a scale,
that’s what. There are miracles, yes, mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs;
at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon. If that is magic, it is minor magic, on the
order of card tricks. Any Hindu god can do a hundred times better. This Son is a god who spent
most of His time telling stories, talking . This Son is a god who walked, a pedestrian god-and in a
hot place, at that-with a stride like any human stride, the sandal reaching just above the rocks along
the way; and when He splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This Son is a god who
died in three hours, with moans, gasps and laments. What kind of a god is that? What is there to
inspire in this Son?
Love, said Father Martin.
And this Son appears only once, long ago, far away? Among an obscure tribe in a backwater
of West Asia on the confines of a long-vanished empire? Is done away with before He has a single
grey hair on His head? Leaves not a single descendant, only scattered, partial testimony, His
complete works doodles in the dirt? Wait a minute. This is more than Brahman with a serious case
of stage fright. This is Brahman selfish. This is Brahman ungenerous and unfair. This is Brahman
practically unmanifest. If Brahman is to have only one son. He must be as abundant as Krishna with
the milkmaids, no? What could justify such divine stinginess?
Love, repeated Father Martin.
I’ll stick to my Krishna, thank you very much. I find his divinity utterly compelling. You can
keep your sweaty, chatty Son to yourself.
That was how I met that troublesome rabbi of long ago: with disbelief and annoyance.
I had tea with Father Martin three days in a row. Each time, as teacup rattled against saucer,
as spoon tinkled against edge of cup, I asked questions.
The answer was always the same.
He bothered me, this Son. Every day I burned with greater indignation against Him, found
more flaws to Him.
He’s petulant ! It’s morning in Bethany and God is hungry, God wants His breakfast. He
comes to a fig tree. It’s not the season for figs, so the tree has no figs. God is peeved. The Son
mutters, “May you never bear fruit again,” and instantly the fig tree withers. So says Matthew,
backed up by Mark.
I ask you, is it the fig tree’s fault that it’s not the season for figs? What kind of a thing is that
to do to an innocent fig tree, wither it instantly?
I couldn’t get Him out of my head. Still can’t. I spent three solid days thinking about Him.
The more He bothered me, the less I could forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I
wanted to leave Him.
On our last day, a few hours before we were to leave Munnar, I hurried up the hill on the left.
It strikes me now as a typically Christian scene. Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the
world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that’s creation in a frenzy. To one born in a
religion where the battle for a single soul can be a relay race run over many centuries, with
innumerable generations passing along the baton, the quick resolution of Christianity has a dizzying
effect. If Hinduism flows placidly like the Ganges, then Christianity bustles like Toronto at rush
hour. It is a religion as swift as a swallow, as urgent as an ambulance. It turns on a dime, expresses
itself in the instant. In a moment you are lost or saved. Christianity stretches back through the ages,
but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.
I booted up that hill. Though Father Martin was not IN-alas, his block was slid over-thank
God he was in.
Short of breath I said, “Father, I would like to be a Christian, please.”
He smiled. “You already are, Piscine-in your heart. Whoever meets Christ in good faith is a
Christian. Here in Munnar you met Christ.”
He patted me on the head. It was more of a thump, actually. His hand went Boom Boom Boom
on my head.
I thought I would explode with joy.
“When you come back, we'll have tea again, my son.”
“Yes, Father.”
It was a good smile he gave me. The smile of Christ.
I entered the church, without fear this time, for it was now my house too. I offered prayers to
Christ, who is alive. Then I raced down the hill on the left and raced up the hill on the right-to offer
thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity I found so compelling, in
my way.
Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination, those towns and rivers, battlefields
and forests, holy mountains and deep seas where gods, saints, villains and ordinary people rub
shoulders, and, in doing so, define who and why we are. I first heard of the tremendous, cosmic
might of loving kindness in this Hindu land. It was Lord Krishna speaking. I heard him, and I
followed him. And in his wisdom and perfect love. Lord Krishna led me to meet one man.
I was fourteen years old-and a well-content Hindu on a holiday-when I met Jesus Christ.
It was not often that Father took time off from the zoo, but one of the times he did we went to
Munnar, just over in Kerala. Munnar is a small hill station surrounded by some of the highest tea
estates in the world. It was early May and the monsoon hadn’t come yet. The plains of Tamil Nadu
were beastly hot. We made it to Munnar after a winding, five-hour car ride from Madurai. The
coolness was as pleasing as having mint in your mouth. We did the tourist thing. We visited a Tata
tea factory. We enjoyed a boat ride on a lake. We toured a cattle-breeding centre. We fed salt to
some Nilgiri tahrs-a species of wild goat-in a national park. (“We have some in our zoo. You
should come to Pondicherry,” said Father to some Swiss tourists.) Ravi and I went for walks in the
tea estates near town. It was all an excuse to keep our lethargy a little busy. By late afternoon Father
and Mother were as settled in the tea room of our comfortable hotel as two cats sunning themselves
at a window. Mother read while Father chatted with fellow guests.
There are three hills within Munnar. They don’t bear comparison with the tall hills—
mountains, you might call them-that surround the town, but I noticed the first morning, as we were
having breakfast, that they did stand out in one way: on each stood a Godhouse. The hill on the
right, across the river from the hotel, had a Hindu temple high on its side; the hill in the middle,
further away, held up a mosque; while the hill on the left was crowned with a Christian church.
On our fourth day in Munnar, as the afternoon was coming to an end, I stood on the hill on the
left. Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church-and I wasn’t
about to dare the deed now. I knew very little about the religion. It had a reputation for few gods
and great violence. But good schools. I walked around the church. It was a building unremittingly
unrevealing of what it held inside, with thick, featureless walls pale blue in colour and high, narrow
windows impossible to look in through. A fortress.
I came upon the rectory. The door was open. I hid around a corner to look upon the scene. To
the left of the door was a small board with the words Parish Priest and Assistant Priest on it. Next
to each was a small sliding block. Both the priest and his assistant were IN, the board informed me
in gold letters, which I could plainly see. One priest was working in his office, his back turned to
the bay windows, while the other was seated on a bench at a round table in the large vestibule that
evidently functioned as a room for receiving visitors. He sat facing the door and the windows, a
book in his hands, a Bible I presumed. He read a little, looked up, read a little more, looked up
again. It was done in a way that was leisurely, yet alert and composed. After some minutes, he
closed the book and put it aside. He folded his hands together on the table and sat there, his
expression serene, showing neither expectation nor resignation.
The vestibule had clean, white walls; the table and benches were of dark wood; and the priest
was dressed in a white cassock-it was all neat, plain, simple. I was filled with a sense of peace. But
more than the setting, what arrested me was my intuitive understanding that he was there-open,
patient-in case someone, anyone, should want to talk to him; a problem of the soul, a heaviness of
the heart, a darkness of the conscience, he would listen with love. He was a man whose profession it
was to love, and he would offer comfort and guidance to the best of his ability.
I was moved. What I had before my eyes stole into my heart and thrilled me.
He got up. I thought he might slide his block over, but he didn’t. He retreated further into the
rectory, that’ s all, leaving the door between the vestibule and the next room as open as the outside
door. I noted this, how both doors were wide open. Clearly, he and his colleague were still
available.
I walked away and I dared. I entered the church. My stomach was in knots. I was terrified I
would meet a Christian who would shout at me, “What are you doing here? How dare you enter this
sacred place, you defiler? Get out, right now!”
There was no one. And little to be understood. I advanced and observed the inner sanctum.
There was a painting. Was this the murti? Something about a human sacrifice. An angry god who
had to be appeased with blood. Dazed women staring up in the air and fat babies with tiny wings
flying about. A charismatic bird. Which one was the god? To the side of the sanctum was a painted
wooden sculpture. The victim again, bruised and bleeding in bold colours. I stared at his knees.
They were badly scraped. The pink skin was peeled back and looked like the petals of a flower,
revealing kneecaps that were fire-engine red. It was hard to connect this torture scene with the priest
in the rectory.
The next day, at around the same time, I let myself IN.
Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily. My
experience with Father Martin was not at all like that. He was very kind. He served me tea and
biscuits in a tea set that tinkled and rattled at every touch; he treated me like a grown-up; and he
told me a story. Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.
And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it’ s
God’s Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, “Piscine, a lion slipped into
the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week
two of them ate the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who’s to
say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something
must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to
them.”
“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”
“Hallelujah, my son.”
“Hallelujah, Father.”
What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology.
I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying. Surely this religion had more
than one story in its bag-religions abound with stories. But Father Martin made me understand that
the stories that came before it-and there were many-were simply prologue to the Christians. Their
religion had one Story, and to it they came back again and again, over and over. It was story enough
for them.
I was quiet that evening at the hotel.
That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their
fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers and usurpers. What is the Ramayana but the account of one
long, bad day for Rama? Adversity, yes. Reversals of fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation
? Death ? I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked,
dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified-and at the hands of mere humans, to boot .
I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying. Brahman Revealed did not go for death. Devils and monsters
did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions-that’s what they were there for. Matter, too, fell
away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It’s wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in
one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount
to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake. If God on the Cross is God
shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the
Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God,
even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be
tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be
real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty
what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?
Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.
And what about this Son’s deportment? There is the story of baby Krishna, wrongly accused
by his friends of eating a bit of dirt. His foster mother, Yashoda, comes up to him with a wagging
finger. “You shouldn’t eat dirt, you naughty boy,” she scolds him. “But I haven’t,” says the
unchallenged lord of all and everything, in sport disguised as a frightened human child. “Tut! Tut!
Open your mouth,” orders Yashoda. Krishna does as he is told. He opens his mouth. Yashoda
gasps. She sees in Krishna’s mouth the whole complete entire timeless universe, all the stars and
planets of space and the distance between them, all the lands and seas of the earth and the life in
them; she sees all the days of yesterday and all the days of tomorrow; she sees all ideas and all
emotions, all pity and all hope, and the three strands of matter; not a pebble, candle, creature,
village or galaxy is missing, including herself and every bit of dirt in its truthful place. “My Lord,
you can close your mouth,” she says reverently.
There is the story of Vishnu incarnated as Vamana the dwarf. He asks of demon king Bali
only as much land as he can cover in three strides. Bali laughs at this runt of a suitor and his puny
request. He consents. Immediately Vishnu takes on his full cosmic size. With one stride he covers
the earth, with the second the heavens, and with the third he boots Bali into the netherworld.
Even Rama, that most human of avatars, who had to be reminded of his divinity when he
grew long-faced over the struggle to get Sita, his wife, back from Ravana, evil king of Lanka, was
no slouch. No spindly cross would have kept him down. When push came to shove, he transcended
his limited human frame with strength no man could have and weapons no man could handle.
That is God as God should be. With shine and power and might. Such as can rescue and save
and put down evil.
This Son, on the other hand, who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is
sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put up with followers who don’t get it
and opponents who don’t respect Him- what kind of a god is that? It’s a god on too human a scale,
that’s what. There are miracles, yes, mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs;
at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon. If that is magic, it is minor magic, on the
order of card tricks. Any Hindu god can do a hundred times better. This Son is a god who spent
most of His time telling stories, talking . This Son is a god who walked, a pedestrian god-and in a
hot place, at that-with a stride like any human stride, the sandal reaching just above the rocks along
the way; and when He splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This Son is a god who
died in three hours, with moans, gasps and laments. What kind of a god is that? What is there to
inspire in this Son?
Love, said Father Martin.
And this Son appears only once, long ago, far away? Among an obscure tribe in a backwater
of West Asia on the confines of a long-vanished empire? Is done away with before He has a single
grey hair on His head? Leaves not a single descendant, only scattered, partial testimony, His
complete works doodles in the dirt? Wait a minute. This is more than Brahman with a serious case
of stage fright. This is Brahman selfish. This is Brahman ungenerous and unfair. This is Brahman
practically unmanifest. If Brahman is to have only one son. He must be as abundant as Krishna with
the milkmaids, no? What could justify such divine stinginess?
Love, repeated Father Martin.
I’ll stick to my Krishna, thank you very much. I find his divinity utterly compelling. You can
keep your sweaty, chatty Son to yourself.
That was how I met that troublesome rabbi of long ago: with disbelief and annoyance.
I had tea with Father Martin three days in a row. Each time, as teacup rattled against saucer,
as spoon tinkled against edge of cup, I asked questions.
The answer was always the same.
He bothered me, this Son. Every day I burned with greater indignation against Him, found
more flaws to Him.
He’s petulant ! It’s morning in Bethany and God is hungry, God wants His breakfast. He
comes to a fig tree. It’s not the season for figs, so the tree has no figs. God is peeved. The Son
mutters, “May you never bear fruit again,” and instantly the fig tree withers. So says Matthew,
backed up by Mark.
I ask you, is it the fig tree’s fault that it’s not the season for figs? What kind of a thing is that
to do to an innocent fig tree, wither it instantly?
I couldn’t get Him out of my head. Still can’t. I spent three solid days thinking about Him.
The more He bothered me, the less I could forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I
wanted to leave Him.
On our last day, a few hours before we were to leave Munnar, I hurried up the hill on the left.
It strikes me now as a typically Christian scene. Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the
world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that’s creation in a frenzy. To one born in a
religion where the battle for a single soul can be a relay race run over many centuries, with
innumerable generations passing along the baton, the quick resolution of Christianity has a dizzying
effect. If Hinduism flows placidly like the Ganges, then Christianity bustles like Toronto at rush
hour. It is a religion as swift as a swallow, as urgent as an ambulance. It turns on a dime, expresses
itself in the instant. In a moment you are lost or saved. Christianity stretches back through the ages,
but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.
I booted up that hill. Though Father Martin was not IN-alas, his block was slid over-thank
God he was in.
Short of breath I said, “Father, I would like to be a Christian, please.”
He smiled. “You already are, Piscine-in your heart. Whoever meets Christ in good faith is a
Christian. Here in Munnar you met Christ.”
He patted me on the head. It was more of a thump, actually. His hand went Boom Boom Boom
on my head.
I thought I would explode with joy.
“When you come back, we'll have tea again, my son.”
“Yes, Father.”
It was a good smile he gave me. The smile of Christ.
I entered the church, without fear this time, for it was now my house too. I offered prayers to
Christ, who is alive. Then I raced down the hill on the left and raced up the hill on the right-to offer
thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity I found so compelling, in
my way.
Chapter 18
Islam followed right behind, hardly a year later. I was fifteen years old and I was exploring
my hometown. The Muslim quarter wasn’t far from the zoo. A small, quiet neighbourhood with
Arabic writing and crescent moons inscribed on the facades of the houses.
I came to Mullah Street. I had a peek at the Jamia Masjid. the Great Mosque, being careful to
stay on the outside, of course. Islam had a reputation worse than Christianity’ s-fewer gods, greater
violence, and I had never heard anyone say good things about Muslim schools-so I wasn’t about to
step in, empty though the place was. The building, clean and white except for various edges painted
green, was an open construction unfolding around an empty central room. Long straw mats covered
the floor everywhere. Above, two slim, fluted minarets rose in the air before a background of
soaring coconut trees. There was nothing evidently religious or, for that matter, interesting about the
place, but it was pleasant and quiet.
I moved on. Just beyond the mosque was a series of attached single-storey dwellings with
small shaded porches. They were rundown and poor, their stucco walls a faded green. One of the
dwellings was a small shop. I noticed a rack of dusty bottles of Thums Up and four transparent
plastic jars half-full of candies. But the main ware was something else, something flat, roundish and
white. I got close. It seemed to be some sort of unleavened bread. I poked at one. It flipped up
stiffly. They looked like three-day-old nans. Who would eat these, I wondered. I picked one up and
wagged it to see if it would break.
A voice said, “Would you like to taste one?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. It’s happened to all of us: there’s sunlight and shade, spots
and patterns of colour, your mind is elsewhere-so you don’t make out what is right in front of you.
Not four feet away, sitting cross-legged before his breads, was a man. I was so startled my
hands flew up and the bread went sailing halfway across the street. It landed on a pat of fresh cow
dung.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t see you!” I burst out. I was just about ready to run away.
“Don’t worry,” he said calmly. “It will feed a cow. Have another one.”
He tore one in two. We ate it together. It was tough and rubbery, real work for the teeth, but
filling . I calmed down.
“So you make these,” I said, to make conversation.
“Yes. Here, let me show you how.” He got off his platform and waved me into his house.
It was a two-room hovel. The larger room, dominated by an oven, was the bakery, and the
other, separated by a flimsy curtain, was his bedroom. The bottom of the oven was covered with
smooth pebbles. He was explaining to me how the bread baked on these heated pebbles when the
nasal call of the muezzin wafted through the air from the mosque. I knew it was the call to prayer,
but I didn’t know what it entailed. I imagined it beckoned the Muslim faithful to the Mosque, much
like bells summoned us Christians to church. Not so. The baker interrupted himself mid-sentence
and said, “Excuse me.” He ducked into the next room for a minute and returned with a rolled-up
carpet, which he unfurled on the floor of his bakery, throwing up a small storm of flour. And right
there before me, in the midst of his workplace, he prayed. It was incongruous, but it was I who felt
out of place. Luckily, he prayed with his eyes closed.
He stood straight. He muttered in Arabic. He brought his hands next to his ears, thumbs
touching the lobes, looking as if he were straining to hear Allah replying. He bent forward. He stood
straight again. He fell to his knees and brought his hands and forehead to the floor. He sat up. He
fell forward again. He stood. He started the whole thing again.
Why, Islam is nothing but an easy sort of exercise, I thought. Hot-weather yoga for the
Bedouins. Asanas without sweat, heaven without strain.
He went through the cycle four times, muttering throughout. When he had finished-with a
right-left turning of the head and a short bout of meditation-he opened his eyes, smiled, stepped off
his carpet and rolled it up with a flick of the hand that spoke of old habit. He returned it to its spot in
the next room. He came back to me. “What was I saying?” he asked.
So it went the first time I saw a Muslim pray-quick. necessary, physical, muttered, striking.
Next time I was praying in church-on my knees, immobile, silent before Christ on the Cross-the
image of this callisthenic communion with God in the middle of bags of flour kept coming to my
mind.
my hometown. The Muslim quarter wasn’t far from the zoo. A small, quiet neighbourhood with
Arabic writing and crescent moons inscribed on the facades of the houses.
I came to Mullah Street. I had a peek at the Jamia Masjid. the Great Mosque, being careful to
stay on the outside, of course. Islam had a reputation worse than Christianity’ s-fewer gods, greater
violence, and I had never heard anyone say good things about Muslim schools-so I wasn’t about to
step in, empty though the place was. The building, clean and white except for various edges painted
green, was an open construction unfolding around an empty central room. Long straw mats covered
the floor everywhere. Above, two slim, fluted minarets rose in the air before a background of
soaring coconut trees. There was nothing evidently religious or, for that matter, interesting about the
place, but it was pleasant and quiet.
I moved on. Just beyond the mosque was a series of attached single-storey dwellings with
small shaded porches. They were rundown and poor, their stucco walls a faded green. One of the
dwellings was a small shop. I noticed a rack of dusty bottles of Thums Up and four transparent
plastic jars half-full of candies. But the main ware was something else, something flat, roundish and
white. I got close. It seemed to be some sort of unleavened bread. I poked at one. It flipped up
stiffly. They looked like three-day-old nans. Who would eat these, I wondered. I picked one up and
wagged it to see if it would break.
A voice said, “Would you like to taste one?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. It’s happened to all of us: there’s sunlight and shade, spots
and patterns of colour, your mind is elsewhere-so you don’t make out what is right in front of you.
Not four feet away, sitting cross-legged before his breads, was a man. I was so startled my
hands flew up and the bread went sailing halfway across the street. It landed on a pat of fresh cow
dung.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t see you!” I burst out. I was just about ready to run away.
“Don’t worry,” he said calmly. “It will feed a cow. Have another one.”
He tore one in two. We ate it together. It was tough and rubbery, real work for the teeth, but
filling . I calmed down.
“So you make these,” I said, to make conversation.
“Yes. Here, let me show you how.” He got off his platform and waved me into his house.
It was a two-room hovel. The larger room, dominated by an oven, was the bakery, and the
other, separated by a flimsy curtain, was his bedroom. The bottom of the oven was covered with
smooth pebbles. He was explaining to me how the bread baked on these heated pebbles when the
nasal call of the muezzin wafted through the air from the mosque. I knew it was the call to prayer,
but I didn’t know what it entailed. I imagined it beckoned the Muslim faithful to the Mosque, much
like bells summoned us Christians to church. Not so. The baker interrupted himself mid-sentence
and said, “Excuse me.” He ducked into the next room for a minute and returned with a rolled-up
carpet, which he unfurled on the floor of his bakery, throwing up a small storm of flour. And right
there before me, in the midst of his workplace, he prayed. It was incongruous, but it was I who felt
out of place. Luckily, he prayed with his eyes closed.
He stood straight. He muttered in Arabic. He brought his hands next to his ears, thumbs
touching the lobes, looking as if he were straining to hear Allah replying. He bent forward. He stood
straight again. He fell to his knees and brought his hands and forehead to the floor. He sat up. He
fell forward again. He stood. He started the whole thing again.
Why, Islam is nothing but an easy sort of exercise, I thought. Hot-weather yoga for the
Bedouins. Asanas without sweat, heaven without strain.
He went through the cycle four times, muttering throughout. When he had finished-with a
right-left turning of the head and a short bout of meditation-he opened his eyes, smiled, stepped off
his carpet and rolled it up with a flick of the hand that spoke of old habit. He returned it to its spot in
the next room. He came back to me. “What was I saying?” he asked.
So it went the first time I saw a Muslim pray-quick. necessary, physical, muttered, striking.
Next time I was praying in church-on my knees, immobile, silent before Christ on the Cross-the
image of this callisthenic communion with God in the middle of bags of flour kept coming to my
mind.
Chapter 19
I went to see him again.
“What’s your religion about?” I asked.
His eyes lit up. “It is about the Beloved,” he replied.
I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of
brotherhood and devotion.
The mosque was truly an open construction, to God and to breeze. We sat cross-legged
listening to the imam until the time came to pray . Then the random pattern of sitters disappeared as
we stood and arranged ourselves shoulder to shoulder in rows, every space ahead being filled by
someone from behind until every line was solid and we were row after row of worshippers. It felt
good to bring my forehead to the ground. Immediately it felt like a deeply religious contact.
“What’s your religion about?” I asked.
His eyes lit up. “It is about the Beloved,” he replied.
I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of
brotherhood and devotion.
The mosque was truly an open construction, to God and to breeze. We sat cross-legged
listening to the imam until the time came to pray . Then the random pattern of sitters disappeared as
we stood and arranged ourselves shoulder to shoulder in rows, every space ahead being filled by
someone from behind until every line was solid and we were row after row of worshippers. It felt
good to bring my forehead to the ground. Immediately it felt like a deeply religious contact.
Chapter 20
He was a Sufi, a Muslim mystic. He sought fana, union with God, and his relationship with
God was personal and loving. “If you take two steps towards God,” he used to tell me, “God runs to
you!”
He was a very plain-featured man, with nothing in his looks or in his dress that made memory
cry hark. I’m not surprised I didn’t see him the first time we met. Even when I knew him very well,
encounter after encounter, I had difficulty recognizing him. His name was Satish Kumar. These are
common names in Tamil Nadu, so the coincidence is not so remarkable. Still, it pleased me that this
pious baker, as plain as a shadow and of solid health, and the Communist biology teacher and
science devotee, the walking mountain on stilts, sadly afflicted with polio in his childhood, carried
the same name. Mr. and Mr. Kumar taught me biology and Islam. Mr. and Mr. Kumar led me to
study zoology and religious studies at the University of Toronto. Mr. and Mr. Kumar were the
prophets of my Indian youth.
We prayed together and we practised dhikr, the recitation of the ninety-nine revealed names
of God. He was a hafiz, one who knows the Qur’an by heart, and he sang it in a slow, simple chant.
My Arabic was never very good, but I loved its sound. The guttural eruptions and long flowing
vowels rolled just beneath my comprehension like a beautiful brook. I gazed into this brook for long
spells of time. It was not wide, just one man’s voice, but it was as deep as the universe.
I described Mr. Kumar’s place as a hovel. Yet no mosque, church or temple ever felt so
sacred to me. I sometimes came out of that bakery feeling heavy with glory. I would climb onto my
bicycle and pedal that glory through the air.
One such time I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could
see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven . The spot was
in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed.
The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful.
Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they
spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful
of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbour,
and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a all circle
coinciding with the centre of a much larger one. Atman met Allah.
One other time I felt God come so close to me. It was in Canada, much later. I was visiting
friends in the country. It was winter. I was out alone on a walk on their large property and returning
to the house. It was a clear, sunny day after a night of snowfall. All nature was blanketed in white.
As I was coming up to the house, I turned my head. There was a wood and in that wood, a small
clearing. A breeze, or perhaps it was an animal, had shaken a branch. Fine snow was falling through
the air, glittering in the sunlight. In that falling golden dust in that sun-splashed clearing, I saw the
Virgin Mary. Why her, I don’t know. My devotion to Mary was secondary. But it was her. Her skin
was pale. She was wearing a white dress and a blue cloak; I remember being struck by their pleats
and folds. When I say I saw her, I don’t quite mean it literally, though she did have body and
colour. I felt I saw her, a vision beyond vision. I stopped and squinted. She looked beautiful and
supremely regal. She was smiling at me with loving kindness. After some seconds she left me. My
heart beat with fear and joy.
The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
God was personal and loving. “If you take two steps towards God,” he used to tell me, “God runs to
you!”
He was a very plain-featured man, with nothing in his looks or in his dress that made memory
cry hark. I’m not surprised I didn’t see him the first time we met. Even when I knew him very well,
encounter after encounter, I had difficulty recognizing him. His name was Satish Kumar. These are
common names in Tamil Nadu, so the coincidence is not so remarkable. Still, it pleased me that this
pious baker, as plain as a shadow and of solid health, and the Communist biology teacher and
science devotee, the walking mountain on stilts, sadly afflicted with polio in his childhood, carried
the same name. Mr. and Mr. Kumar taught me biology and Islam. Mr. and Mr. Kumar led me to
study zoology and religious studies at the University of Toronto. Mr. and Mr. Kumar were the
prophets of my Indian youth.
We prayed together and we practised dhikr, the recitation of the ninety-nine revealed names
of God. He was a hafiz, one who knows the Qur’an by heart, and he sang it in a slow, simple chant.
My Arabic was never very good, but I loved its sound. The guttural eruptions and long flowing
vowels rolled just beneath my comprehension like a beautiful brook. I gazed into this brook for long
spells of time. It was not wide, just one man’s voice, but it was as deep as the universe.
I described Mr. Kumar’s place as a hovel. Yet no mosque, church or temple ever felt so
sacred to me. I sometimes came out of that bakery feeling heavy with glory. I would climb onto my
bicycle and pedal that glory through the air.
One such time I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could
see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven . The spot was
in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed.
The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful.
Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they
spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful
of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbour,
and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a all circle
coinciding with the centre of a much larger one. Atman met Allah.
One other time I felt God come so close to me. It was in Canada, much later. I was visiting
friends in the country. It was winter. I was out alone on a walk on their large property and returning
to the house. It was a clear, sunny day after a night of snowfall. All nature was blanketed in white.
As I was coming up to the house, I turned my head. There was a wood and in that wood, a small
clearing. A breeze, or perhaps it was an animal, had shaken a branch. Fine snow was falling through
the air, glittering in the sunlight. In that falling golden dust in that sun-splashed clearing, I saw the
Virgin Mary. Why her, I don’t know. My devotion to Mary was secondary. But it was her. Her skin
was pale. She was wearing a white dress and a blue cloak; I remember being struck by their pleats
and folds. When I say I saw her, I don’t quite mean it literally, though she did have body and
colour. I felt I saw her, a vision beyond vision. I stopped and squinted. She looked beautiful and
supremely regal. She was smiling at me with loving kindness. After some seconds she left me. My
heart beat with fear and joy.
The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
Chapter 21
I am sitting in a downtown cafe, after, thinking. I have just spent most of an afternoon with
him. Our encounters always leave me weary of the glum contentment that characterizes my life.
What were those words he used that struck me? Ah, yes: “dry, yeastless factuality” “the better
story.” I take pen and paper out and write:
Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation,
elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an
intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not
intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call
love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately,
nonetheless ineluctably .
I pause. What of God’s silence? I think it over. I add:
An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.
him. Our encounters always leave me weary of the glum contentment that characterizes my life.
What were those words he used that struck me? Ah, yes: “dry, yeastless factuality” “the better
story.” I take pen and paper out and write:
Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation,
elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an
intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not
intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call
love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately,
nonetheless ineluctably .
I pause. What of God’s silence? I think it over. I add:
An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.
Chapter 22
I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”-and the
deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays
beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying,
“Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and
miss the better story .
deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays
beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying,
“Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and
miss the better story .
Chapter 23
Alas the sense of community that a common faith brings to a people spelled trouble for me. In
time, my religious doings went from the notice of those to whom it didn’t matter and only amused,
to that of those to whom it did matter-and they were not amused.
“What is your son doing going to temple?” asked the priest.
“Your son was seen in church crossing himself,” said the imam.
“Your son has gone Muslim,” said the pandit.
Yes, it was all forcefully brought to the attention of my bemused parents. You see, they didn’t
know. They didn’t know that I was a practising Hindu, Christian and Muslim. Teenagers always
hide a few things from their parents, isn’t that so? All sixteen-year-olds have secrets, don’t they?
But fate decided that my parents and I and the three wise men, as I shall call them, should meet one
day on the Goubert Salai seaside esplanade and that my secret should be outed. It was a lovely,
breezy, hot Sunday afternoon and the Bay of Bengal glittered under a blue sky. Townspeople were
out for a stroll. Children screamed and laughed. Coloured balloons floated in the air. Ice cream sales
were brisk. Why think of business on such a day, I ask? Why couldn’t they have just walked by
with a nod and a smile? It was not to be. We were to meet not just one wise man but all three, and
not one after another but at the same time, and each would decide upon seeing us that right then was
the golden occasion to meet that Pondicherry notable, the zoo director, he of the model devout son.
When I saw the first, I smiled; by the time I had laid eyes on the third, my smile had frozen into a
mask of horror. When it was clear that all three were converging on us, my heart jumped before
sinking very low.
The wise men seemed annoyed when they realized that all three of them were approaching the
same people. Each must have assumed that the others were there for some business other than
pastoral and had rudely chosen that moment to deal with it Glances of displeasure were exchanged.
My parents looked puzzled to have their way gently blocked by three broadly smiling
religious strangers. I should explain that my family was anything but orthodox. Father saw himself
as part of the New India-rich, modern and as secular as ice cream. He didn’t have a religious bone
in his body. He was a businessman, pronounced busynessman in his case, a hardworking,
earthbound professional, more concerned with inbreeding among the lions than any overarching
moral or existential scheme. It’s true that he had all new animals blessed by a priest and there were
two small shrines at the zoo, one to Lord Ganesha and one to Hanuman, gods likely to please a zoo
director, what with the first having the head of an elephant and the second being a monkey, but
Father’s calculation was that this was good for business, not good for his soul, a matter of public
relations rather than personal salvation. Spiritual worry was alien to him; it was financial worry that
rocked his being. “One epidemic in the collection,” he used to say, “and we’ll end up in a road crew
breaking up stones.” Mother was mum, bored and neutral on the subject. A Hindu upbringing and a
Baptist education had precisely cancelled each other out as far as religion was concerned and had
left her serenely impious. I suspect she suspected that I had a different take on the matter, but she
never said anything when as a child I devoured the comic books of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata and an illustrated children’s Bible and other stories of the gods. She herself was a big
reader. She was pleased to see me with my nose buried in a book, any book, so long as it wasn’t
naughty. As for Ravi, if Lord Krishna had held a cricket bat rather than a flute, if Christ had
appeared more plainly to him as an umpire, if the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had
shown some notions of bowling, he might have lifted a religious eyelid, but they didn’t, and so he
slumbered.
After the “Hellos” and the “Good days,” there was an awkward silence. The priest broke it
when he said, with pride in his voice, “Piscine is a good Christian boy. I hope to see him join our
choir soon.”
My parents, the pandit and the imam looked surprised.
“You must be mistaken. He’s a good Muslim boy. He comes without fail to Friday prayer,
and his knowledge of the Holy Qur’an is coming along nicely.” So said the imam.
My parents, the priest and the pandit looked incredulous.
The pandit spoke. “You’re both wrong. He’s a good Hindu boy. 1 see him all the time at the
temple coming for darshan and performing puja.”
My parents, the imam and the priest looked astounded.
“There is no mistake,” said the priest. “I know this boy. He is Piscine Molitor Patel and he’s a
Christian.”
“I know him too, and I tell you he’s a Muslim,” asserted the imam.
“Nonsense!” cried the pandit. “Piscine was born a Hindu, lives a Hindu and will die a Hindu!”
The three wise men stared at each other, breathless and disbelieving.
Lord, avert their eyes from me, I whispered in my soul.
All eyes fell upon me.
“Piscine, can this be true?” asked the imam earnestly. “Hindus and Christians are idolaters.
They have many gods.”
“And Muslims have many wives,” responded the pandit .
The priest looked askance at both of them. “Piscine,” he nearly whispered, “there is salvation
only in Jesus.”
“Balderdash! Christians know nothing about religion,” said the pandit.
“They strayed long ago from God’s path,” said the imam.
“Where’s God in your religion?” snapped the priest. “You don’t have a single miracle to show
for it. What kind of religion is that, without miracles?”
“It isn’t a circus with dead people jumping out of tombs all the time, that’s what! We Muslims
stick to the essential miracle of existence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing-these are
miracles enough for us.”
“Feathers and rain are all very nice, but we like to know that God is truly with us.”
“Is that so? Well, a whole lot of good it did God to be with you-you tried to kill him! You
banged him to a cross with great big nails. Is that a civilized way to treat a prophet? The prophet
Muhammad-peace be upon him-brought us the word of God without any undignified nonsense and
died at a ripe old age.”
“The word of God? To that illiterate merchant of yours in the middle of the desert? Those
were drooling epileptic fits brought on by the swaying of his camel, not divine revelation. That, or
the sun frying his brains!”
“If the Prophet-p.b.u.h.-were alive, he would have choice words for you,” replied the imam,
with narrowed eyes.
“Well, he’s not! Christ is alive, while your old ‘p.b.u.h.’ is dead, dead, dead!”
The pandit interrupted them quietly. In Tamil he said, “The real question is, why is Piscine
dallying with these foreign religions?”
The eyes of the priest and the imam properly popped out of their heads. They were both
native Tamils.
“God is universal,” spluttered the priest.
The imam nodded strong approval. “There is only one God.”
“And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof
of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,” pronounced the pandit.
“Says the slave-driver of the caste system,” huffed the imam. “Hindus enslave people and
worship dressed-up dolls.”
“They are golden calf lovers. They kneel before cows,” the priest chimed in.
“While Christians kneel before a white man! They are the flunkies of a foreign god. They are
the nightmare of all non-white people.”
“And they eat pigs and are cannibals,” added the imam for good measure.
“What it comes down to,” the priest put out with cool rage, “is whether Piscine wants real
religion-or myths from a cartoon strip.”
“God-or idols,” intoned the imam gravely.
“Our gods-or colonial gods,” hissed the pandit.
It was hard to tell whose face was more inflamed. It looked as if might come to blows.
Father raised his hands. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!” he interjected. “I would like to
remind you there is freedom of practice in this country.”
Three apoplectic faces turned to him.
“Yes! Practice -singular!” the wise men screamed in unison. Three index fingers, like
punctuation marks, jumped to attention in the air to emphasize their point.
They were not pleased at the unintended choral effect or the spontaneous unity of their
gestures. Their fingers came down quickly, and they sighed and groaned each on his own. Father
and Mother stared on, at a loss for words.
The pandit spoke first. “Mr. Patel, Piscine’s piety is admirable. In these troubled times it’s
good to see a boy so keen on God. We all agree on that.” The imam and the priest nodded. “But he
can’t be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim. It’s impossible. He must choose.”
“I don’t think it’s a crime, but I suppose you’re right,” Father replied.
The three murmured agreement and looked heavenward, as did Father, whence they felt the
decision must come. Mother looked at me.
A silence fell heavily on my shoulders.
“Fhnmm, Piscine?” Mother nudged me. “How do you feel about the question?”
“Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God,” I blurted out, and looked
down, red in the face.
My embarrassment was contagious. No one said anything. It happened that we were not far
from the statue of Gandhi on the esplanade. Stick in hand, an impish smile on his lips, a twinkle in
his eyes, the Mahatma walked. I fancy that he heard our conversation, but that he paid even greater
attention to my heart. Father cleared his throat and said in a half-voice, “I suppose that’s what we’re
all trying to do-love God.”
I thought it very funny that he should say that, he who hadn’t stepped into a temple with a
serious intent since I had had the faculty of memory. But it seemed to do the trick. You can’t
reprimand a boy for wanting to love God. The three wise men pulled away with stiff, grudging
smiles on their faces.
Father looked at me for a second, as if to speak, then thought better, said, “Ice cream,
anyone?” and headed for the closest ice cream wallah before we could answer. Mother gazed at me
a little longer, with an expression that was both tender and perplexed.
That was my introduction to interfaith dialogue. Father bought three ice cream sandwiches.
We ate them in unusual silence as we continued on our Sunday walk.
time, my religious doings went from the notice of those to whom it didn’t matter and only amused,
to that of those to whom it did matter-and they were not amused.
“What is your son doing going to temple?” asked the priest.
“Your son was seen in church crossing himself,” said the imam.
“Your son has gone Muslim,” said the pandit.
Yes, it was all forcefully brought to the attention of my bemused parents. You see, they didn’t
know. They didn’t know that I was a practising Hindu, Christian and Muslim. Teenagers always
hide a few things from their parents, isn’t that so? All sixteen-year-olds have secrets, don’t they?
But fate decided that my parents and I and the three wise men, as I shall call them, should meet one
day on the Goubert Salai seaside esplanade and that my secret should be outed. It was a lovely,
breezy, hot Sunday afternoon and the Bay of Bengal glittered under a blue sky. Townspeople were
out for a stroll. Children screamed and laughed. Coloured balloons floated in the air. Ice cream sales
were brisk. Why think of business on such a day, I ask? Why couldn’t they have just walked by
with a nod and a smile? It was not to be. We were to meet not just one wise man but all three, and
not one after another but at the same time, and each would decide upon seeing us that right then was
the golden occasion to meet that Pondicherry notable, the zoo director, he of the model devout son.
When I saw the first, I smiled; by the time I had laid eyes on the third, my smile had frozen into a
mask of horror. When it was clear that all three were converging on us, my heart jumped before
sinking very low.
The wise men seemed annoyed when they realized that all three of them were approaching the
same people. Each must have assumed that the others were there for some business other than
pastoral and had rudely chosen that moment to deal with it Glances of displeasure were exchanged.
My parents looked puzzled to have their way gently blocked by three broadly smiling
religious strangers. I should explain that my family was anything but orthodox. Father saw himself
as part of the New India-rich, modern and as secular as ice cream. He didn’t have a religious bone
in his body. He was a businessman, pronounced busynessman in his case, a hardworking,
earthbound professional, more concerned with inbreeding among the lions than any overarching
moral or existential scheme. It’s true that he had all new animals blessed by a priest and there were
two small shrines at the zoo, one to Lord Ganesha and one to Hanuman, gods likely to please a zoo
director, what with the first having the head of an elephant and the second being a monkey, but
Father’s calculation was that this was good for business, not good for his soul, a matter of public
relations rather than personal salvation. Spiritual worry was alien to him; it was financial worry that
rocked his being. “One epidemic in the collection,” he used to say, “and we’ll end up in a road crew
breaking up stones.” Mother was mum, bored and neutral on the subject. A Hindu upbringing and a
Baptist education had precisely cancelled each other out as far as religion was concerned and had
left her serenely impious. I suspect she suspected that I had a different take on the matter, but she
never said anything when as a child I devoured the comic books of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata and an illustrated children’s Bible and other stories of the gods. She herself was a big
reader. She was pleased to see me with my nose buried in a book, any book, so long as it wasn’t
naughty. As for Ravi, if Lord Krishna had held a cricket bat rather than a flute, if Christ had
appeared more plainly to him as an umpire, if the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had
shown some notions of bowling, he might have lifted a religious eyelid, but they didn’t, and so he
slumbered.
After the “Hellos” and the “Good days,” there was an awkward silence. The priest broke it
when he said, with pride in his voice, “Piscine is a good Christian boy. I hope to see him join our
choir soon.”
My parents, the pandit and the imam looked surprised.
“You must be mistaken. He’s a good Muslim boy. He comes without fail to Friday prayer,
and his knowledge of the Holy Qur’an is coming along nicely.” So said the imam.
My parents, the priest and the pandit looked incredulous.
The pandit spoke. “You’re both wrong. He’s a good Hindu boy. 1 see him all the time at the
temple coming for darshan and performing puja.”
My parents, the imam and the priest looked astounded.
“There is no mistake,” said the priest. “I know this boy. He is Piscine Molitor Patel and he’s a
Christian.”
“I know him too, and I tell you he’s a Muslim,” asserted the imam.
“Nonsense!” cried the pandit. “Piscine was born a Hindu, lives a Hindu and will die a Hindu!”
The three wise men stared at each other, breathless and disbelieving.
Lord, avert their eyes from me, I whispered in my soul.
All eyes fell upon me.
“Piscine, can this be true?” asked the imam earnestly. “Hindus and Christians are idolaters.
They have many gods.”
“And Muslims have many wives,” responded the pandit .
The priest looked askance at both of them. “Piscine,” he nearly whispered, “there is salvation
only in Jesus.”
“Balderdash! Christians know nothing about religion,” said the pandit.
“They strayed long ago from God’s path,” said the imam.
“Where’s God in your religion?” snapped the priest. “You don’t have a single miracle to show
for it. What kind of religion is that, without miracles?”
“It isn’t a circus with dead people jumping out of tombs all the time, that’s what! We Muslims
stick to the essential miracle of existence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing-these are
miracles enough for us.”
“Feathers and rain are all very nice, but we like to know that God is truly with us.”
“Is that so? Well, a whole lot of good it did God to be with you-you tried to kill him! You
banged him to a cross with great big nails. Is that a civilized way to treat a prophet? The prophet
Muhammad-peace be upon him-brought us the word of God without any undignified nonsense and
died at a ripe old age.”
“The word of God? To that illiterate merchant of yours in the middle of the desert? Those
were drooling epileptic fits brought on by the swaying of his camel, not divine revelation. That, or
the sun frying his brains!”
“If the Prophet-p.b.u.h.-were alive, he would have choice words for you,” replied the imam,
with narrowed eyes.
“Well, he’s not! Christ is alive, while your old ‘p.b.u.h.’ is dead, dead, dead!”
The pandit interrupted them quietly. In Tamil he said, “The real question is, why is Piscine
dallying with these foreign religions?”
The eyes of the priest and the imam properly popped out of their heads. They were both
native Tamils.
“God is universal,” spluttered the priest.
The imam nodded strong approval. “There is only one God.”
“And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof
of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,” pronounced the pandit.
“Says the slave-driver of the caste system,” huffed the imam. “Hindus enslave people and
worship dressed-up dolls.”
“They are golden calf lovers. They kneel before cows,” the priest chimed in.
“While Christians kneel before a white man! They are the flunkies of a foreign god. They are
the nightmare of all non-white people.”
“And they eat pigs and are cannibals,” added the imam for good measure.
“What it comes down to,” the priest put out with cool rage, “is whether Piscine wants real
religion-or myths from a cartoon strip.”
“God-or idols,” intoned the imam gravely.
“Our gods-or colonial gods,” hissed the pandit.
It was hard to tell whose face was more inflamed. It looked as if might come to blows.
Father raised his hands. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!” he interjected. “I would like to
remind you there is freedom of practice in this country.”
Three apoplectic faces turned to him.
“Yes! Practice -singular!” the wise men screamed in unison. Three index fingers, like
punctuation marks, jumped to attention in the air to emphasize their point.
They were not pleased at the unintended choral effect or the spontaneous unity of their
gestures. Their fingers came down quickly, and they sighed and groaned each on his own. Father
and Mother stared on, at a loss for words.
The pandit spoke first. “Mr. Patel, Piscine’s piety is admirable. In these troubled times it’s
good to see a boy so keen on God. We all agree on that.” The imam and the priest nodded. “But he
can’t be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim. It’s impossible. He must choose.”
“I don’t think it’s a crime, but I suppose you’re right,” Father replied.
The three murmured agreement and looked heavenward, as did Father, whence they felt the
decision must come. Mother looked at me.
A silence fell heavily on my shoulders.
“Fhnmm, Piscine?” Mother nudged me. “How do you feel about the question?”
“Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God,” I blurted out, and looked
down, red in the face.
My embarrassment was contagious. No one said anything. It happened that we were not far
from the statue of Gandhi on the esplanade. Stick in hand, an impish smile on his lips, a twinkle in
his eyes, the Mahatma walked. I fancy that he heard our conversation, but that he paid even greater
attention to my heart. Father cleared his throat and said in a half-voice, “I suppose that’s what we’re
all trying to do-love God.”
I thought it very funny that he should say that, he who hadn’t stepped into a temple with a
serious intent since I had had the faculty of memory. But it seemed to do the trick. You can’t
reprimand a boy for wanting to love God. The three wise men pulled away with stiff, grudging
smiles on their faces.
Father looked at me for a second, as if to speak, then thought better, said, “Ice cream,
anyone?” and headed for the closest ice cream wallah before we could answer. Mother gazed at me
a little longer, with an expression that was both tender and perplexed.
That was my introduction to interfaith dialogue. Father bought three ice cream sandwiches.
We ate them in unusual silence as we continued on our Sunday walk.
Chapter 24
| Ravi had a field day of it when he found out. “So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year?” he said, bringing the palms of his hands together in front of his face in a reverent namaskar. “Does Mecca beckon?” He crossed himself. “Or will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?” He drew in the air a Greek letter, making clear the spelling of his Mockery . “Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you’re going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.” And other lampoonery of such kind. |
Chapter 25
And that wasn’t the end of it. There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend
God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and
helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by
children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive
a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they
sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the
outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within
that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but
the small clearing of each heart . Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard,
and it is to their defence, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.
Once an oaf chased me away from the Great Mosque. When I went to church the priest glared
at me so that I could not feel the peace of Christ. A Brahmin sometimes shooed me away from
darshan. My religious doings were reported to my parents in the hushed, urgent tones of treason
revealed.
As if this small-mindedness did God any good.
To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
I stopped attending Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception and went instead to Our
Lady of Angels. I no longer lingered after Friday prayer among my brethren. I went to temple at
crowded times when the Brahmins were too distracted to come between God and me.
God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and
helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by
children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive
a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they
sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the
outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within
that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but
the small clearing of each heart . Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard,
and it is to their defence, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.
Once an oaf chased me away from the Great Mosque. When I went to church the priest glared
at me so that I could not feel the peace of Christ. A Brahmin sometimes shooed me away from
darshan. My religious doings were reported to my parents in the hushed, urgent tones of treason
revealed.
As if this small-mindedness did God any good.
To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
I stopped attending Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception and went instead to Our
Lady of Angels. I no longer lingered after Friday prayer among my brethren. I went to temple at
crowded times when the Brahmins were too distracted to come between God and me.
Chapter 26
A few days after the meeting on the esplanade, I took my courage into my hands and went to
see Father at his office.
“Father?”
“Yes, Piscine.”
“I would like to be baptized and I would like a prayer rug.”
My words intruded slowly. He looked up from his papers after some seconds.
“A what? What?”
“I would like to pray outside without getting my pants dirty. And I’m attending a Christian
school without having received the proper baptism of Christ.”
“Why do you want to pray outside? In fact, why do you want to pray at all?”
“Because I love God.”
“Aha.” He seemed taken aback by my answer, nearly embarrassed by it. There was a pause. I
thought he was going to offer me ice cream again. “Well, Petit Seminaire is Christian only in name.
There are many Hindu boys there who aren’t Christians. You’ll get just as good an education
without being baptized. Praying to Allah won’t make any difference, either.”
“But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.”
“You can’t be both. You must be either one or the other.”
“Why can’t I be both?”
“They’re separate religions! They have nothing in common.”
“That’s not what they say! They both claim Abraham as theirs. Muslims say the God of the
Hebrews and Christians is the same as the God of the Muslims. They recognize David, Moses and
Jesus as prophets.”
“What does this have to do with us, Piscine? We’re Indians !”
“There have been Christians and Muslims in India for centuries! Some people say Jesus is
buried in Kashmir.”
He said nothing, only looked at me, his brow furrowed. Suddenly business called.
“Talk to Mother about it.”
She was reading.
“Mother?”
“Yes, darling.”
“I would like to be baptized and I would like a prayer rug.”
“Talk to Father about it.”
“I did. He told me to talk to you about it.”
“Did he?” She laid her book down . She looked out in the direction of the zoo. At that moment
I’m sure Father felt a blow of chill air against the back of his neck. She turned to the bookshelf. “I
have a book here that you’ll like.” She already had her arm out, reaching for a volume. It was
Robert Louis Stevenson. This was her usual tactic.
“Tve already read that, Mother. Three times.”
“Oh.” Her arm hovered to the left.
“The same with Conan Doyle,” I said.
Her arm swung to the right. “R. K. Narayan? You can’t possibly have read all of Narayan?”
“These matters are important to me, Mother.”
“ Robinson Crusoe !”
“Mother!”
“But Piscine!” she said. She settled back into her chair, a path-of-least-resistance look on her
face, which meant I had to put up a stiff fight in precisely the right spots. She adjusted a cushion.
“Father and I find your religious zeal a bit of a mystery.”
“It is a Mystery.”
“Hmmm. I don’t mean it that way. Listen, my darling, if you’re going to be religious, you
must be either a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim. You heard what they said on the esplanade.”
“I don’t see why I can’t be all three. Mamaji has two passports. He’s Indian and French. Why
can’t I be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim?”
“That’s different. France and India are nations on earth.”
“How many nations are there in the sky?”
She thought for a second. “One. That’s the point. One nation, one passport.”
“One nation in the sky?”
“Yes. Or none. There’s that option too, you know. These are terribly old-fashioned things
you’ve taken to.”
“If there’s only one nation in the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?”
A cloud of uncertainty came over her face.
“Bapu Gandhi said-”
“Yes, I know what Bapu Gandhi said.”
She brought a hand to her forehead. She had a weary look, Mother did. “Good grief,” she
said.
see Father at his office.
“Father?”
“Yes, Piscine.”
“I would like to be baptized and I would like a prayer rug.”
My words intruded slowly. He looked up from his papers after some seconds.
“A what? What?”
“I would like to pray outside without getting my pants dirty. And I’m attending a Christian
school without having received the proper baptism of Christ.”
“Why do you want to pray outside? In fact, why do you want to pray at all?”
“Because I love God.”
“Aha.” He seemed taken aback by my answer, nearly embarrassed by it. There was a pause. I
thought he was going to offer me ice cream again. “Well, Petit Seminaire is Christian only in name.
There are many Hindu boys there who aren’t Christians. You’ll get just as good an education
without being baptized. Praying to Allah won’t make any difference, either.”
“But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.”
“You can’t be both. You must be either one or the other.”
“Why can’t I be both?”
“They’re separate religions! They have nothing in common.”
“That’s not what they say! They both claim Abraham as theirs. Muslims say the God of the
Hebrews and Christians is the same as the God of the Muslims. They recognize David, Moses and
Jesus as prophets.”
“What does this have to do with us, Piscine? We’re Indians !”
“There have been Christians and Muslims in India for centuries! Some people say Jesus is
buried in Kashmir.”
He said nothing, only looked at me, his brow furrowed. Suddenly business called.
“Talk to Mother about it.”
She was reading.
“Mother?”
“Yes, darling.”
“I would like to be baptized and I would like a prayer rug.”
“Talk to Father about it.”
“I did. He told me to talk to you about it.”
“Did he?” She laid her book down . She looked out in the direction of the zoo. At that moment
I’m sure Father felt a blow of chill air against the back of his neck. She turned to the bookshelf. “I
have a book here that you’ll like.” She already had her arm out, reaching for a volume. It was
Robert Louis Stevenson. This was her usual tactic.
“Tve already read that, Mother. Three times.”
“Oh.” Her arm hovered to the left.
“The same with Conan Doyle,” I said.
Her arm swung to the right. “R. K. Narayan? You can’t possibly have read all of Narayan?”
“These matters are important to me, Mother.”
“ Robinson Crusoe !”
“Mother!”
“But Piscine!” she said. She settled back into her chair, a path-of-least-resistance look on her
face, which meant I had to put up a stiff fight in precisely the right spots. She adjusted a cushion.
“Father and I find your religious zeal a bit of a mystery.”
“It is a Mystery.”
“Hmmm. I don’t mean it that way. Listen, my darling, if you’re going to be religious, you
must be either a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim. You heard what they said on the esplanade.”
“I don’t see why I can’t be all three. Mamaji has two passports. He’s Indian and French. Why
can’t I be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim?”
“That’s different. France and India are nations on earth.”
“How many nations are there in the sky?”
She thought for a second. “One. That’s the point. One nation, one passport.”
“One nation in the sky?”
“Yes. Or none. There’s that option too, you know. These are terribly old-fashioned things
you’ve taken to.”
“If there’s only one nation in the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?”
A cloud of uncertainty came over her face.
“Bapu Gandhi said-”
“Yes, I know what Bapu Gandhi said.”
She brought a hand to her forehead. She had a weary look, Mother did. “Good grief,” she
said.
Chapter 27
Later that evening I overheard my parents speaking.
“You said yes?” said Father.
“I believe he asked you too. You referred him to me,” replied Mother.
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“I had a very busy day. . .”
“You’re not busy now. You’re quite comfortably unemployed by the looks of it. If you want
to march into his room and pull the prayer rug from under his feet and discuss the question of
Christian baptism with him, please go ahead. I won’t object.”
“No, no.” I could tell from his voice that Father was settling deeper into his chair. There was a
pause.
“He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas, he pursued. “I don’t
understand it. We’re a modern Indian family; we live in a modern way, India is on the cusp of
becoming a truly modern and advanced nation-and here we’ve produced a son who thinks he’s the
reincarnation of Sri Ramakrishna.”
“If Mrs. Gandhi is what being modern and advanced is about, I’m not sure I like it,” Mother
said.
“Mrs. Gandhi will pass! Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march.
Technology helps and good ideas spread-these are two laws of nature. If you don’t let technology
help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of
this. Mrs. Gandhi and her foolishness will pass. The New India will come.”
(Indeed she would pass. And the New India, or one family of it, would decide to move to
Canada.)
Father went on: “Did you hear when he said, ‘Bapu Gandhi said, “All religions are true’”?”
“Yes .”
“Bapu Gandhi? The boy is getting to be on affectionate terms with Gandhi? After Daddy
Gandhi, what next? Uncle Jesus? And what’s this nonsense-has he really become a Muslim ?”
“It seems so.”
“A Muslim! A devout Hindu, all right, I can understand. A Christian in addition, it’s getting
to be a bit strange, but I can stretch my mind. The Christians have been here for a long time-Saint
Thomas, Saint Francis Xavier, the missionaries and so on. We owe them good schools.”
“Yes.”
“So all that I can sort of accept. But Muslim ? It’s totally foreign to our tradition. They’re
outsiders.”
“They’ve been here a very long time too. They’re a hundred times more numerous than the
Christians.”
“That makes no difference. They’re outsiders.”
“Perhaps Piscine is marching to a different drumbeat of progress.”
“You’re defending the boy? You don’t mind it that he’s fancying himself a Muslim?”
“What can we do, Santosh? He’s taken it to heart, and it’s not doing anyone any harm. Maybe
it’s just a phase. It too may pass-like Mrs. Gandhi.”
“Why can’t he have the normal interests of a boy his age? Look at Ravi. All he can think
about is cricket, movies and music.”
“You think that’s better?”
“No, no. Oh, I don’t know what to think. It’s been a long day.” He sighed. “I wonder how far
he’ll go with these interests.”
Mother chuckled. “Last week he finished a book called The Imitation of Christ .”
“The Imitation of Christ! I say again, I wonder how far he’ll go with these interests!” cried
Father.
They laughed.
“You said yes?” said Father.
“I believe he asked you too. You referred him to me,” replied Mother.
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“I had a very busy day. . .”
“You’re not busy now. You’re quite comfortably unemployed by the looks of it. If you want
to march into his room and pull the prayer rug from under his feet and discuss the question of
Christian baptism with him, please go ahead. I won’t object.”
“No, no.” I could tell from his voice that Father was settling deeper into his chair. There was a
pause.
“He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas, he pursued. “I don’t
understand it. We’re a modern Indian family; we live in a modern way, India is on the cusp of
becoming a truly modern and advanced nation-and here we’ve produced a son who thinks he’s the
reincarnation of Sri Ramakrishna.”
“If Mrs. Gandhi is what being modern and advanced is about, I’m not sure I like it,” Mother
said.
“Mrs. Gandhi will pass! Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march.
Technology helps and good ideas spread-these are two laws of nature. If you don’t let technology
help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of
this. Mrs. Gandhi and her foolishness will pass. The New India will come.”
(Indeed she would pass. And the New India, or one family of it, would decide to move to
Canada.)
Father went on: “Did you hear when he said, ‘Bapu Gandhi said, “All religions are true’”?”
“Yes .”
“Bapu Gandhi? The boy is getting to be on affectionate terms with Gandhi? After Daddy
Gandhi, what next? Uncle Jesus? And what’s this nonsense-has he really become a Muslim ?”
“It seems so.”
“A Muslim! A devout Hindu, all right, I can understand. A Christian in addition, it’s getting
to be a bit strange, but I can stretch my mind. The Christians have been here for a long time-Saint
Thomas, Saint Francis Xavier, the missionaries and so on. We owe them good schools.”
“Yes.”
“So all that I can sort of accept. But Muslim ? It’s totally foreign to our tradition. They’re
outsiders.”
“They’ve been here a very long time too. They’re a hundred times more numerous than the
Christians.”
“That makes no difference. They’re outsiders.”
“Perhaps Piscine is marching to a different drumbeat of progress.”
“You’re defending the boy? You don’t mind it that he’s fancying himself a Muslim?”
“What can we do, Santosh? He’s taken it to heart, and it’s not doing anyone any harm. Maybe
it’s just a phase. It too may pass-like Mrs. Gandhi.”
“Why can’t he have the normal interests of a boy his age? Look at Ravi. All he can think
about is cricket, movies and music.”
“You think that’s better?”
“No, no. Oh, I don’t know what to think. It’s been a long day.” He sighed. “I wonder how far
he’ll go with these interests.”
Mother chuckled. “Last week he finished a book called The Imitation of Christ .”
“The Imitation of Christ! I say again, I wonder how far he’ll go with these interests!” cried
Father.
They laughed.
Chapter 28
I loved my prayer rug. Ordinary in quality though it was, it glowed with beauty in my eyes.
I’m sorry I lost it. Wherever I laid it I felt special affection for the patch of ground beneath it and
the immediate surroundings, which to me is a clear indication that it was a good prayer rug because
it helped me remember that the earth is the creation of God and sacred the same all over. The
pattern, in gold lines upon a background of red, was plain: a narrow rectangle with a triangular peak
at one extremity to indicate the qibla, the direction of prayer, and little curlicues floating around it,
like wisps of smoke or accents from a strange language. The pile was soft. When I prayed, the short,
unknotted tassels were inches from the tip of my forehead at one end of the carpet and inches from
the tip of my toes at the other, a cozy size to make you feel at home anywhere upon this vast earth.
I prayed outside because I liked it. Most often I unrolled my prayer rug in a corner of the yard
behind the house. It was a secluded spot in the shade of a coral tree, next to a wall that was covered
with bougainvillea. Along the length of the wall was a row of potted poinsettias. The bougainvillea
had also crept through the tree. The contrast between its purple bracts and the red flowers of the tree
was very pretty. And when that tree was in bloom, it was a regular aviary of crows, mynahs,
babblers, rosy pastors, sunbirds and parakeets. The wall was to my right, at a wide angle. Ahead of
me and to my left, beyond the milky, mottled shade of the tree, lay the sundrenched open space of
the yard. The appearance of things changed, of course, depending on the weather, the time of day,
the time of year. But it’ s all very clear in my memory, as if it never changed. I faced Mecca with the
help of a line I scratched into the pale yellow ground and carefully kept up.
Sometimes, upon finishing my prayers, I would turn and catch sight of Father or Mother or
Ravi observing me, until they got used to the sight.
My baptism was a slightly awkward affair. Mother played along nicely, Father looked on
stonily, and Ravi was mercifully absent because of a cricket match, which did not prevent him from
commenting at great length on the event. The water trickled down my face and down my neck;
though just a beaker’s worth, it had the refreshing effect of a monsoon rain.
I’m sorry I lost it. Wherever I laid it I felt special affection for the patch of ground beneath it and
the immediate surroundings, which to me is a clear indication that it was a good prayer rug because
it helped me remember that the earth is the creation of God and sacred the same all over. The
pattern, in gold lines upon a background of red, was plain: a narrow rectangle with a triangular peak
at one extremity to indicate the qibla, the direction of prayer, and little curlicues floating around it,
like wisps of smoke or accents from a strange language. The pile was soft. When I prayed, the short,
unknotted tassels were inches from the tip of my forehead at one end of the carpet and inches from
the tip of my toes at the other, a cozy size to make you feel at home anywhere upon this vast earth.
I prayed outside because I liked it. Most often I unrolled my prayer rug in a corner of the yard
behind the house. It was a secluded spot in the shade of a coral tree, next to a wall that was covered
with bougainvillea. Along the length of the wall was a row of potted poinsettias. The bougainvillea
had also crept through the tree. The contrast between its purple bracts and the red flowers of the tree
was very pretty. And when that tree was in bloom, it was a regular aviary of crows, mynahs,
babblers, rosy pastors, sunbirds and parakeets. The wall was to my right, at a wide angle. Ahead of
me and to my left, beyond the milky, mottled shade of the tree, lay the sundrenched open space of
the yard. The appearance of things changed, of course, depending on the weather, the time of day,
the time of year. But it’ s all very clear in my memory, as if it never changed. I faced Mecca with the
help of a line I scratched into the pale yellow ground and carefully kept up.
Sometimes, upon finishing my prayers, I would turn and catch sight of Father or Mother or
Ravi observing me, until they got used to the sight.
My baptism was a slightly awkward affair. Mother played along nicely, Father looked on
stonily, and Ravi was mercifully absent because of a cricket match, which did not prevent him from
commenting at great length on the event. The water trickled down my face and down my neck;
though just a beaker’s worth, it had the refreshing effect of a monsoon rain.
Chapter 29
Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a
great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you
feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and
difficult?
The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.
The mid-1970s were troubled times in India. I gathered that from the deep furrows that
appeared on Father’s forehead when he read the papers. Or from snippets of conversation that I
caught between him and Mother and Mamaji and others. It’s not that I didn’t understand the drift of
what they said-it’s that I wasn’t interested. The orang-utans were as eager for chapattis as ever; the
monkeys never asked after the news from Delhi; the rhinos and goats continued to live in peace; the
birds twittered; the clouds carried rain; the sun was hot; the earth breathed; God was-there was no
Emergency in my world.
Mrs. Gandhi finally got the best of Father. In February 1976, the Tamil Nadu government was
brought down by Delhi. It had been one of Mrs. Gandhi's most vocal critics. The takeover was
smoothly enforced-Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s ministry vanished quietly into “resignation” or
house arrest-and what does the fall of one local government matter when the whole country’s
Constitution has been suspended these last eight months? But it was to Father the crowning touch in
Mrs. Gandhi's dictatorial takeover of the nation. The camel at the zoo was unfazed, but that straw
broke Father’s back.
He shouted, “Soon she’ll come down to our zoo and tell us that her jails are full, she needs
more space. Could we put Desai with the lions?”
Morarji Desai was an opposition politician. No friend of Mrs. Gandhi’s. It makes me sad, my
father’s ceaseless worrying. Mrs. Gandhi could have personally bombed the zoo, it would have
been fine with me if Father had been gay about it. I wish he hadn’t fretted so much. It’s hard on a
son to see his father sick with worry .
But worry he did. Any business is risky business, and none more so than small b business,
the one that risks the shirt on its back. A zoo is a cultural institution. Fike a public library, like a
museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by this token, not much of a
money-making venture, for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims, much
to Father’s chagrin. The truth was, we were not a rich family, certainly not by Canadian standards.
We were a poor family that happened to own a lot of animals, though not the roof above their heads
(or above ours, for that matter). The life of a zoo, like the life of its inhabitants in the wild, is
precarious. It is neither big enough a business to be above the law nor small enough to survive on its
margins. To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in
India’s Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Fong-term, bad politics is bad for
business.
People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no
matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will
be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that they
might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that
happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.
The New India split to pieces and collapsed in Father’s mind. Mother assented. We would
bolt.
It was announced to us one evening during dinner. Ravi and I were thunderstruck. Canada ! If
Andhra Pradesh, just north of us, was alien, if Sri Lanka, a monkey’s hop across a strait, was the
dark side of the moon, imagine what Canada was. Canada meant absolutely nothing to us. It was
like Timbuktu, by definition a place permanently far away.
great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you
feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and
difficult?
The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.
The mid-1970s were troubled times in India. I gathered that from the deep furrows that
appeared on Father’s forehead when he read the papers. Or from snippets of conversation that I
caught between him and Mother and Mamaji and others. It’s not that I didn’t understand the drift of
what they said-it’s that I wasn’t interested. The orang-utans were as eager for chapattis as ever; the
monkeys never asked after the news from Delhi; the rhinos and goats continued to live in peace; the
birds twittered; the clouds carried rain; the sun was hot; the earth breathed; God was-there was no
Emergency in my world.
Mrs. Gandhi finally got the best of Father. In February 1976, the Tamil Nadu government was
brought down by Delhi. It had been one of Mrs. Gandhi's most vocal critics. The takeover was
smoothly enforced-Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s ministry vanished quietly into “resignation” or
house arrest-and what does the fall of one local government matter when the whole country’s
Constitution has been suspended these last eight months? But it was to Father the crowning touch in
Mrs. Gandhi's dictatorial takeover of the nation. The camel at the zoo was unfazed, but that straw
broke Father’s back.
He shouted, “Soon she’ll come down to our zoo and tell us that her jails are full, she needs
more space. Could we put Desai with the lions?”
Morarji Desai was an opposition politician. No friend of Mrs. Gandhi’s. It makes me sad, my
father’s ceaseless worrying. Mrs. Gandhi could have personally bombed the zoo, it would have
been fine with me if Father had been gay about it. I wish he hadn’t fretted so much. It’s hard on a
son to see his father sick with worry .
But worry he did. Any business is risky business, and none more so than small b business,
the one that risks the shirt on its back. A zoo is a cultural institution. Fike a public library, like a
museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by this token, not much of a
money-making venture, for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims, much
to Father’s chagrin. The truth was, we were not a rich family, certainly not by Canadian standards.
We were a poor family that happened to own a lot of animals, though not the roof above their heads
(or above ours, for that matter). The life of a zoo, like the life of its inhabitants in the wild, is
precarious. It is neither big enough a business to be above the law nor small enough to survive on its
margins. To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in
India’s Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Fong-term, bad politics is bad for
business.
People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no
matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will
be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that they
might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that
happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.
The New India split to pieces and collapsed in Father’s mind. Mother assented. We would
bolt.
It was announced to us one evening during dinner. Ravi and I were thunderstruck. Canada ! If
Andhra Pradesh, just north of us, was alien, if Sri Lanka, a monkey’s hop across a strait, was the
dark side of the moon, imagine what Canada was. Canada meant absolutely nothing to us. It was
like Timbuktu, by definition a place permanently far away.
Chapter 30
He’s married. I am bent down, taking my shoes off, when I hear him say, “I would
like you to meet my wife.” I look up and there beside him is... Mrs. Patel. "Hello,” she
says, extending her hand and smiling. “Piscine has been telling me lots about you.” I cant
say the same of her. I had no idea. She’ s on her way out, so we talk only a few minutes.
She’s also Indian but has a more typically Canadian accent. She must be second
generation. She’s a little younger than him, skin slightly darker, long black hair woven in
a tress. Bright dark eyes and lovely white teeth. She has in her arms a dry-cleaned white
lab coat in a protective plastic film . She’s a pharmacist. When I say "Nice meeting you,
Mrs. Patel,” she replies, “Please, make it Meena.” After a quick kiss between husband
and wife, she’s off on a working Saturday.
This house is more than a box full of icons. I start noticing small signs of conjugal
existence. They were there all along, but I hadn’t seen them because I wasn’t looking for
them.
He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
Is she the nemesis of my digestive tract?
“I’ve made a special chutney for you,” he says. He’s smiling.
No, he is.
like you to meet my wife.” I look up and there beside him is... Mrs. Patel. "Hello,” she
says, extending her hand and smiling. “Piscine has been telling me lots about you.” I cant
say the same of her. I had no idea. She’ s on her way out, so we talk only a few minutes.
She’s also Indian but has a more typically Canadian accent. She must be second
generation. She’s a little younger than him, skin slightly darker, long black hair woven in
a tress. Bright dark eyes and lovely white teeth. She has in her arms a dry-cleaned white
lab coat in a protective plastic film . She’s a pharmacist. When I say "Nice meeting you,
Mrs. Patel,” she replies, “Please, make it Meena.” After a quick kiss between husband
and wife, she’s off on a working Saturday.
This house is more than a box full of icons. I start noticing small signs of conjugal
existence. They were there all along, but I hadn’t seen them because I wasn’t looking for
them.
He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
Is she the nemesis of my digestive tract?
“I’ve made a special chutney for you,” he says. He’s smiling.
No, he is.
Chapter 31
They met once, Mr. and Mr. Kumar, the baker and the teacher. The first Mr. Kumar had
expressed the wish to see the zoo. “All these years and I’ve never seen it. It’s so close by, too. Will
you show it to me?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “It would be an honour.”
We agreed to meet at the main gate the next day after school.
I worried all that day. I scolded myself, “You fool! Why did you say the main gate? At any
time there will be a crowd of people there. Have you forgotten how plain he looks? You’ll never
recognize him!” If I walked by him without seeing him he would be hurt. He would think I had
changed my mind and didn’t want to be seen with a poor Muslim baker. He would leave without
saying a word. He wouldn’t be angry-he would accept my claims that it was the sun in my eyes-but
he wouldn’t want to come to the zoo any more. I could see it happening that way. I had to
recognize him. I would hide and wait until I was certain it was him, that’s what I would do. But I
had noticed before that it was when I tried my hardest to recognize him that I was least able to pick
him out. The very effort seemed to blind me.
At the appointed hour I stood squarely before the main gate of the zoo and started rubbing my
eyes with both hands.
“What are you doing?”
It was Raj, a friend.
“I’m busy.”
“You’re busy rubbing your eyes?”
“Go away.”
“Let’s go to Beach Road.”
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“Well, you’ll miss him if you keep rubbing your eyes like that.”
“Thank you for the information. Have fun on Beach Road.”
“How about Government Park?”
“I can’t, I tell you.”
“Come on.”
“Please, Raj, move on!”
He left. I went back to rubbing my eyes.
“Will you help me with my math homework, Pi?”
It was Ajith, another friend.
“Later. Go away.”
“Hello, Piscine.”
It was Mrs. Radhakrishna, a friend of Mother’s. In a few more words I eased her on her way.
“Excuse me. Where’s Laporte Street?”
A stranger.
“That way.”
“How much is admission to the zoo?”
Another stranger.
“Five rupees. The ticket booth is right there.”
“Has the chlorine got to your eyes?”
It was Mamaji.
“Hello, Mamaji. No, it hasn’t.”
“Is your father around?”
“I think so.”
“See you tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Mamaji.”
“I am here. Piscine.”
My hands froze over my eyes. That voice. Strange in a familiar way, familiar in a strange
way. I felt a smile welling up in me.
“ Salaam alaykum , Mr. Kumar! How good to see you.”
“Wa alaykum as-salaam . Is something wrong with your eyes?”
“No, nothing. Just a bit of dust.”
“They look quite red .”
“It’s nothing.”
He headed for the ticket booth but I called him back.
“No, no. Not for you, master.”
It was with pride that I waved the ticket collector’s hand away and showed Mr. Kumar into
the zoo.
He marvelled at everything, at how to tall trees came tall giraffes, how carnivores were
supplied with herbivores and herbivores with grass, how some creatures crowded the day and others
the night, how some that needed sharp beaks had sharp beaks and others that needed limber limbs
had limber limbs. It made me happy that he was so impressed.
He quoted from the Holy Qur’an: “In all this there are messages indeed for a people who use
their reason.”
We came to the zebras. Mr. Kumar had never heard of such creatures, let alone seen one. He
was dumbfounded.
“They’re called zebras,” I said.
“Have they been painted with a brush?”
“No, no. They look like that naturally.”
“What happens when it rains?”
“Nothing.”
“The stripes don’t melt?”
“No.”
I had brought some carrots. There was one left, a large and sturdy specimen. I took it out of
the bag. At that moment I heard a slight scraping of gravel to my right. It was Mr. Kumar, coming
up to the railing in his usual limping and rolling gait.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello, Pi.”
The baker, a shy but dignified man, nodded at the teacher, who nodded back.
An alert zebra had noticed my carrot and had come up to the low fence. It twitched its ears
and stamped the ground softly. I broke the carrot in two and gave one half to Mr. Kumar and one
half to Mr. Kumar. “Thank you, Piscine,” said one; “Thank you. Pi,” said the other. Mr. Kumar
went first, dipping his hand over the fence. The zebra’s thick, strong, black lips grasped the carrot
eagerly. Mr. Kumar wouldn’t let go. The zebra sank its teeth into the carrot and snapped it in two. It
crunched loudly on the treat for a few seconds, then reached for the remaining piece, lips flowing
over Mr. Kumar’s fingertips. He released the carrot and touched the zebra’s soft nose.
It was Mr. Kumar’s turn. He wasn’t so demanding of the zebra. Once it had his half of the
carrot between its lips, he let go. The lips hurriedly moved the carrot into the mouth.
Mr. and Mr. Kumar looked delighted. “A zebra , you say?” said Mr. Kumar.
“That’s right,” I replied. “It belongs to the same family as the ass and the horse.”
“The Rolls-Royce of equids,” said Mr. Kumar.
“What a wondrous creature,” said Mr. Kumar.
“This one’s a Grant’s zebra,” I said.
Mr. Kumar said, “E quits burchelli boehmi .”
Mr. Kumar said, “A llahu akbar .”
I said, “It’s very pretty.”
We looked on.
expressed the wish to see the zoo. “All these years and I’ve never seen it. It’s so close by, too. Will
you show it to me?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “It would be an honour.”
We agreed to meet at the main gate the next day after school.
I worried all that day. I scolded myself, “You fool! Why did you say the main gate? At any
time there will be a crowd of people there. Have you forgotten how plain he looks? You’ll never
recognize him!” If I walked by him without seeing him he would be hurt. He would think I had
changed my mind and didn’t want to be seen with a poor Muslim baker. He would leave without
saying a word. He wouldn’t be angry-he would accept my claims that it was the sun in my eyes-but
he wouldn’t want to come to the zoo any more. I could see it happening that way. I had to
recognize him. I would hide and wait until I was certain it was him, that’s what I would do. But I
had noticed before that it was when I tried my hardest to recognize him that I was least able to pick
him out. The very effort seemed to blind me.
At the appointed hour I stood squarely before the main gate of the zoo and started rubbing my
eyes with both hands.
“What are you doing?”
It was Raj, a friend.
“I’m busy.”
“You’re busy rubbing your eyes?”
“Go away.”
“Let’s go to Beach Road.”
“I’m waiting for someone.”
“Well, you’ll miss him if you keep rubbing your eyes like that.”
“Thank you for the information. Have fun on Beach Road.”
“How about Government Park?”
“I can’t, I tell you.”
“Come on.”
“Please, Raj, move on!”
He left. I went back to rubbing my eyes.
“Will you help me with my math homework, Pi?”
It was Ajith, another friend.
“Later. Go away.”
“Hello, Piscine.”
It was Mrs. Radhakrishna, a friend of Mother’s. In a few more words I eased her on her way.
“Excuse me. Where’s Laporte Street?”
A stranger.
“That way.”
“How much is admission to the zoo?”
Another stranger.
“Five rupees. The ticket booth is right there.”
“Has the chlorine got to your eyes?”
It was Mamaji.
“Hello, Mamaji. No, it hasn’t.”
“Is your father around?”
“I think so.”
“See you tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Mamaji.”
“I am here. Piscine.”
My hands froze over my eyes. That voice. Strange in a familiar way, familiar in a strange
way. I felt a smile welling up in me.
“ Salaam alaykum , Mr. Kumar! How good to see you.”
“Wa alaykum as-salaam . Is something wrong with your eyes?”
“No, nothing. Just a bit of dust.”
“They look quite red .”
“It’s nothing.”
He headed for the ticket booth but I called him back.
“No, no. Not for you, master.”
It was with pride that I waved the ticket collector’s hand away and showed Mr. Kumar into
the zoo.
He marvelled at everything, at how to tall trees came tall giraffes, how carnivores were
supplied with herbivores and herbivores with grass, how some creatures crowded the day and others
the night, how some that needed sharp beaks had sharp beaks and others that needed limber limbs
had limber limbs. It made me happy that he was so impressed.
He quoted from the Holy Qur’an: “In all this there are messages indeed for a people who use
their reason.”
We came to the zebras. Mr. Kumar had never heard of such creatures, let alone seen one. He
was dumbfounded.
“They’re called zebras,” I said.
“Have they been painted with a brush?”
“No, no. They look like that naturally.”
“What happens when it rains?”
“Nothing.”
“The stripes don’t melt?”
“No.”
I had brought some carrots. There was one left, a large and sturdy specimen. I took it out of
the bag. At that moment I heard a slight scraping of gravel to my right. It was Mr. Kumar, coming
up to the railing in his usual limping and rolling gait.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello, Pi.”
The baker, a shy but dignified man, nodded at the teacher, who nodded back.
An alert zebra had noticed my carrot and had come up to the low fence. It twitched its ears
and stamped the ground softly. I broke the carrot in two and gave one half to Mr. Kumar and one
half to Mr. Kumar. “Thank you, Piscine,” said one; “Thank you. Pi,” said the other. Mr. Kumar
went first, dipping his hand over the fence. The zebra’s thick, strong, black lips grasped the carrot
eagerly. Mr. Kumar wouldn’t let go. The zebra sank its teeth into the carrot and snapped it in two. It
crunched loudly on the treat for a few seconds, then reached for the remaining piece, lips flowing
over Mr. Kumar’s fingertips. He released the carrot and touched the zebra’s soft nose.
It was Mr. Kumar’s turn. He wasn’t so demanding of the zebra. Once it had his half of the
carrot between its lips, he let go. The lips hurriedly moved the carrot into the mouth.
Mr. and Mr. Kumar looked delighted. “A zebra , you say?” said Mr. Kumar.
“That’s right,” I replied. “It belongs to the same family as the ass and the horse.”
“The Rolls-Royce of equids,” said Mr. Kumar.
“What a wondrous creature,” said Mr. Kumar.
“This one’s a Grant’s zebra,” I said.
Mr. Kumar said, “E quits burchelli boehmi .”
Mr. Kumar said, “A llahu akbar .”
I said, “It’s very pretty.”
We looked on.
Chapter 32
There are many examples of animals coming to surprising living arrangements. All are
instances of that animal equivalent of anthropomorphism: zoomorphism, where an animal takes a
human being, or another animal, to be one of its kind.
The most famous case is also the most common: the pet dog, which has so assimilated
humans into the realm of doghood as to want to mate with them, a fact that any dog owner who has
had to pull an amorous dog from the leg of a mortified visitor will confirm.
Our golden agouti and spotted paca got along very well, conentedly huddling together and
sleeping against each other until the first was stolen.
I have already mentioned our rhinoceros-and-goat herd, and the case of circus lions.
There are confirmed stories of drowning sailors being pushed up to the surface of the water
and held there by dolphins, a characteristic way in which these marine mammals help each other.
A case is mentioned in the literature of a stoat and a rat living in a companion relationship,
while other rats presented to the stoat were devoured by it in the typical way of stoats.
We had our own case of the freak suspension of the predator-prey relationship. We had a
mouse that lived for several weeks with the vipers. While other mice dropped in the terrarium
disappeared within two days, this little brown Methuselah built itself a nest, stored the grains we
gave it in various hideaways and scampered about in plain sight of the snakes. We were amazed.
We put up a sign to bring the mouse to the public’s attention. It finally met its end in a curious way:
a young viper bit it. Was the viper unaware of the mouse’s special status? Unsocialized to it,
perhaps? Whatever the case, the mouse was bitten by a young viper but devoured-and
immediately-by an adult . If there was a spell, it was broken by the young one. Things returned to
normal after that. All mice disappeared down the vipers’ gullets at the usual rate.
In the trade, dogs are sometimes used as foster mothers for lion cubs. Though the cubs grow
to become larger than their caregiver, and far more dangerous, they never give their mother trouble
and she never loses her placid behaviour or her sense of authority over her litter. Signs have to be
put up to explain to the public that the dog is not live food left for the lions (just as we had to put up
a sign pointing out that rhinoceros are herbivores and do not eat goats).
What could be the explanation for zoomorphism? Can’t a rhinoceros distinguish big from
small, tough hide from soft fur? Isn’t it plain to a dolphin what a dolphin is like? I believe the
answer lies in something I mentioned earlier, that measure of madness that moves life in strange but
saving ways. The golden agouti, like the rhinoceros, was in need of companionship. The circus
lions don’t care to know that their leader is a weakling human; the fiction guarantees their social
well-being and staves off violent anarchy. As for the lion cubs, they would positively keel over with
fright if they knew their mother was a dog, for that would mean they were motherless, the absolute
worst condition imaginable for any young, warm-blooded life. I’m sure even the adult viper, as it
swallowed the mouse, must have felt somewhere in its undeveloped mind a twinge of regret, a
feeling that something greater was just missed, an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude
reality of a reptile.
instances of that animal equivalent of anthropomorphism: zoomorphism, where an animal takes a
human being, or another animal, to be one of its kind.
The most famous case is also the most common: the pet dog, which has so assimilated
humans into the realm of doghood as to want to mate with them, a fact that any dog owner who has
had to pull an amorous dog from the leg of a mortified visitor will confirm.
Our golden agouti and spotted paca got along very well, conentedly huddling together and
sleeping against each other until the first was stolen.
I have already mentioned our rhinoceros-and-goat herd, and the case of circus lions.
There are confirmed stories of drowning sailors being pushed up to the surface of the water
and held there by dolphins, a characteristic way in which these marine mammals help each other.
A case is mentioned in the literature of a stoat and a rat living in a companion relationship,
while other rats presented to the stoat were devoured by it in the typical way of stoats.
We had our own case of the freak suspension of the predator-prey relationship. We had a
mouse that lived for several weeks with the vipers. While other mice dropped in the terrarium
disappeared within two days, this little brown Methuselah built itself a nest, stored the grains we
gave it in various hideaways and scampered about in plain sight of the snakes. We were amazed.
We put up a sign to bring the mouse to the public’s attention. It finally met its end in a curious way:
a young viper bit it. Was the viper unaware of the mouse’s special status? Unsocialized to it,
perhaps? Whatever the case, the mouse was bitten by a young viper but devoured-and
immediately-by an adult . If there was a spell, it was broken by the young one. Things returned to
normal after that. All mice disappeared down the vipers’ gullets at the usual rate.
In the trade, dogs are sometimes used as foster mothers for lion cubs. Though the cubs grow
to become larger than their caregiver, and far more dangerous, they never give their mother trouble
and she never loses her placid behaviour or her sense of authority over her litter. Signs have to be
put up to explain to the public that the dog is not live food left for the lions (just as we had to put up
a sign pointing out that rhinoceros are herbivores and do not eat goats).
What could be the explanation for zoomorphism? Can’t a rhinoceros distinguish big from
small, tough hide from soft fur? Isn’t it plain to a dolphin what a dolphin is like? I believe the
answer lies in something I mentioned earlier, that measure of madness that moves life in strange but
saving ways. The golden agouti, like the rhinoceros, was in need of companionship. The circus
lions don’t care to know that their leader is a weakling human; the fiction guarantees their social
well-being and staves off violent anarchy. As for the lion cubs, they would positively keel over with
fright if they knew their mother was a dog, for that would mean they were motherless, the absolute
worst condition imaginable for any young, warm-blooded life. I’m sure even the adult viper, as it
swallowed the mouse, must have felt somewhere in its undeveloped mind a twinge of regret, a
feeling that something greater was just missed, an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude
reality of a reptile.
Chapter 33
He shows me family memorabilia. Wedding photos first. A Hindu wedding with
Canada prominently on the edges. A younger him, a younger her. They went to Niagara
Falls for their honeymoon. Had a lovely time. Smiles to prove it. We move back in time.
Photos from his student days at U of T: with friends; in front of St. Mike’s; in his room;
during Diwali on Gerrard Street; reading at St. Basil’s Church dressed in a white gown;
wearing another kind of white gown in a lab of the zoology department; on graduation
day. A smile every time, but his eyes tell another story.
Photos from Brazil, with plenty of three-toed sloths in situ .
With a turn of a page we jump over the Pacific-and there is next to nothing. He
tells me that the camera did click regularly-on all the usual important occasions-but
everything was lost. What little there is consists of what was assembled by Mamaji and
mailed over after the events.
There is a photo taken at the zoo during the visit of a V.l.P. In black and white
another world is revealed to me. The photo is crowded with people. A Union cabinet
minister is the focus of attention. There’s a giraffe in the background. Near the edge of
the group, I recognize a younger Mr. Adirubasamy.
“Mamaji?” I ask, pointing.
“Yes,” he says.
There’s a man next to the minister, with hom-rimmed glasses and hair very cleanly
combed. He looks like a plausible Mr. Patel, face rounder than his son’s.
“Is this your father?” I ask .
He shakes his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
There’s a pause of a few seconds. He says, “It’s my father who took the picture.”
On the same page there’ s another group shot, mostly of schoolchildren. He taps the
photo.
“That’s Richard Parker,” he says.
I'm amazed. I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance.
Unfortunately, it’s black and white again and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better
days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn’t even realize that his picture is
being taken.
The opposing page is entirely taken up by a colour photo of the swimming pool of
the Aurobindo Ashram. It’s a nice big outdoor pool with clear, sparkling water, a clean
blue bottom and an attached diving pool.
The next page features a photo of the front gate of Petit Seminaire school An arch
has the school’s motto painted on it: Nil magnum nisi bonum . No greatness without
goodness.
And that’s it. An entire childhood memorialized in four nearly irrelevant
photographs.
He grows sombre.
“The worst of it,” he says, “is that I can hardly remember what my mother looks
like any more. I can see her in my mind, but it’s fleeting. As soon as I try to have a good
look at her, she fades. It’s the same with her voice. If I saw her again in the street, it
would all come back. But that’s not likely to happen. It’s very sad not to remember what
your mother looks like.”
He closes the book.
Canada prominently on the edges. A younger him, a younger her. They went to Niagara
Falls for their honeymoon. Had a lovely time. Smiles to prove it. We move back in time.
Photos from his student days at U of T: with friends; in front of St. Mike’s; in his room;
during Diwali on Gerrard Street; reading at St. Basil’s Church dressed in a white gown;
wearing another kind of white gown in a lab of the zoology department; on graduation
day. A smile every time, but his eyes tell another story.
Photos from Brazil, with plenty of three-toed sloths in situ .
With a turn of a page we jump over the Pacific-and there is next to nothing. He
tells me that the camera did click regularly-on all the usual important occasions-but
everything was lost. What little there is consists of what was assembled by Mamaji and
mailed over after the events.
There is a photo taken at the zoo during the visit of a V.l.P. In black and white
another world is revealed to me. The photo is crowded with people. A Union cabinet
minister is the focus of attention. There’s a giraffe in the background. Near the edge of
the group, I recognize a younger Mr. Adirubasamy.
“Mamaji?” I ask, pointing.
“Yes,” he says.
There’s a man next to the minister, with hom-rimmed glasses and hair very cleanly
combed. He looks like a plausible Mr. Patel, face rounder than his son’s.
“Is this your father?” I ask .
He shakes his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
There’s a pause of a few seconds. He says, “It’s my father who took the picture.”
On the same page there’ s another group shot, mostly of schoolchildren. He taps the
photo.
“That’s Richard Parker,” he says.
I'm amazed. I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance.
Unfortunately, it’s black and white again and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better
days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn’t even realize that his picture is
being taken.
The opposing page is entirely taken up by a colour photo of the swimming pool of
the Aurobindo Ashram. It’s a nice big outdoor pool with clear, sparkling water, a clean
blue bottom and an attached diving pool.
The next page features a photo of the front gate of Petit Seminaire school An arch
has the school’s motto painted on it: Nil magnum nisi bonum . No greatness without
goodness.
And that’s it. An entire childhood memorialized in four nearly irrelevant
photographs.
He grows sombre.
“The worst of it,” he says, “is that I can hardly remember what my mother looks
like any more. I can see her in my mind, but it’s fleeting. As soon as I try to have a good
look at her, she fades. It’s the same with her voice. If I saw her again in the street, it
would all come back. But that’s not likely to happen. It’s very sad not to remember what
your mother looks like.”
He closes the book.
Chapter 34
Father said, “We’ll sail like Columbus!”
“He was hoping to find India,” I pointed out sullenly.
We sold the zoo, lock, stock and barrel. To a new country, a new life. Besides assuring our
collection of a happy future, the transaction would pay for our immigration and leave us with a
good sum to make a fresh start in Canada (though now, when I think of it, the sum is laughable-how
blinded we are by money). We could have sold our animals to zoos in India, but American zoos
were willing to pay higher prices. CITES , the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species, had just come into effect, and the Window on the trading of captured wild animals had
slammed shut. The future of zoos would now lie with other zoos. The Pondicherry Zoo closed shop
at just the right time. There was a scramble to buy our animals. The final buyers were a number of
zoos, mainly the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the soon-to-open Minnesota Zoo, but odd
animals were going to Los Angeles, Louisville, Oklahoma City and Cincinnati.
And two animals were being shipped to the Canada Zoo. That’s how Ravi and I felt. We did
not want to go. We did not want to live in a country of gale-force winds and
minus-two-hundred-degree winters. Canada was not on the cricket map. Departure was made
easier-as far as getting us used to the idea-by the time it took for all the pre-departure preparations.
It took well over a year. I don’t mean for us. I mean for the animals. Considering that animals
dispense with clothes, footwear, linen, furniture, kitchenware, toiletries; that nationality means
nothing to them; that they care not a jot for passports, money, employment prospects, schools, cost
of housing, healthcare facilities-considering, in short, their lightness of being, it’s amazing how
hard it is to move them. Moving a zoo is like moving a city.
The paperwork was colossal. Litres of water used up in the wetting of stamps. Dear Mr.
So-and-so written hundreds of times. Offers made. Sighs heard. Doubts expressed. Haggling gone
through. Decisions sent higher up for approval. Prices agreed upon. Deals clinched. Dotted lines
signed. Congratulations given. Certificates of origin sought. Certificates of health sought. Export
permits sought. Import permits sought. Quarantine regulations clarified. Transportation organized.
A fortune spent on telephone calls. It’s a joke in the zoo business, a weary joke, that the paperwork
involved in trading a shrew weighs more than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in trading
an elephant weighs more than a whale, and that you must never try to trade a whale, never . There
seemed to be a single file of nit-picking bureaucrats from Pondicherry to Minneapolis via Delhi and
Washington, each with his form, his problem, his hesitation. Shipping the animals to the moon
couldn’t possibly have been more complicated. Lather pulled nearly every hair off his head and
came close to giving up on a number of occasions.
There were surprises. Most of our birds and reptiles, and our lemurs, rhinos, orang-utans,
mandrills, lion-tailed macaques, giraffes, anteaters, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, zebras,
Himalayan and sloth bears, Indian elephants and Nilgiri tahrs, among others, were in demand, but
others, Elfie for example, were met with silence. “A cataract operation!” Lather shouted, waving the
letter. “They’ll take her if we do a cataract operation on her right eye. On a hippopotamus! What
next? Nose jobs on the rhinos?” Some of our other animals were considered “too common,” the
lions and baboons, for example. Lather judiciously traded these for an extra orang-utan from the
Mysore Zoo and a chimpanzee from the Manila Zoo. (As for Elfie, she lived out the rest of her days
at the Trivandrum Zoo.) One zoo asked for “an authentic Brahmin cow” for their children’s zoo.
Lather walked out into the urban jungle of Pondicherry and bought a cow with dark wet eyes, a nice
fat hump and horns so straight and at such right angles to its head that it looked as if it had licked an
electrical outlet. Lather had its horns painted bright orange and little plastic bells fitted to the tips,
for added authenticity.
A deputation of three Americans came. I was very curious. I had never seen real live
Americans. They were pink, fat, friendly, very competent and sweated profusely. They examined
our animals. They put most of them to sleep and then applied stethoscopes to hearts, examined urine
and feces as if horoscopes, drew blood in syringes and analyzed it, fondled humps and bumps,
tapped teeth, blinded eyes with flashlights, pinched skins, stroked and pulled hairs. Poor animals.
They must have thought they were being drafted into the U.S. Army. We got big smiles from the
Americans and bone-crushing, handshakes.
The result was that the animals, like us, got their working papers. They were future Yankees,
and we, future Canucks.
“He was hoping to find India,” I pointed out sullenly.
We sold the zoo, lock, stock and barrel. To a new country, a new life. Besides assuring our
collection of a happy future, the transaction would pay for our immigration and leave us with a
good sum to make a fresh start in Canada (though now, when I think of it, the sum is laughable-how
blinded we are by money). We could have sold our animals to zoos in India, but American zoos
were willing to pay higher prices. CITES , the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species, had just come into effect, and the Window on the trading of captured wild animals had
slammed shut. The future of zoos would now lie with other zoos. The Pondicherry Zoo closed shop
at just the right time. There was a scramble to buy our animals. The final buyers were a number of
zoos, mainly the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the soon-to-open Minnesota Zoo, but odd
animals were going to Los Angeles, Louisville, Oklahoma City and Cincinnati.
And two animals were being shipped to the Canada Zoo. That’s how Ravi and I felt. We did
not want to go. We did not want to live in a country of gale-force winds and
minus-two-hundred-degree winters. Canada was not on the cricket map. Departure was made
easier-as far as getting us used to the idea-by the time it took for all the pre-departure preparations.
It took well over a year. I don’t mean for us. I mean for the animals. Considering that animals
dispense with clothes, footwear, linen, furniture, kitchenware, toiletries; that nationality means
nothing to them; that they care not a jot for passports, money, employment prospects, schools, cost
of housing, healthcare facilities-considering, in short, their lightness of being, it’s amazing how
hard it is to move them. Moving a zoo is like moving a city.
The paperwork was colossal. Litres of water used up in the wetting of stamps. Dear Mr.
So-and-so written hundreds of times. Offers made. Sighs heard. Doubts expressed. Haggling gone
through. Decisions sent higher up for approval. Prices agreed upon. Deals clinched. Dotted lines
signed. Congratulations given. Certificates of origin sought. Certificates of health sought. Export
permits sought. Import permits sought. Quarantine regulations clarified. Transportation organized.
A fortune spent on telephone calls. It’s a joke in the zoo business, a weary joke, that the paperwork
involved in trading a shrew weighs more than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in trading
an elephant weighs more than a whale, and that you must never try to trade a whale, never . There
seemed to be a single file of nit-picking bureaucrats from Pondicherry to Minneapolis via Delhi and
Washington, each with his form, his problem, his hesitation. Shipping the animals to the moon
couldn’t possibly have been more complicated. Lather pulled nearly every hair off his head and
came close to giving up on a number of occasions.
There were surprises. Most of our birds and reptiles, and our lemurs, rhinos, orang-utans,
mandrills, lion-tailed macaques, giraffes, anteaters, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, zebras,
Himalayan and sloth bears, Indian elephants and Nilgiri tahrs, among others, were in demand, but
others, Elfie for example, were met with silence. “A cataract operation!” Lather shouted, waving the
letter. “They’ll take her if we do a cataract operation on her right eye. On a hippopotamus! What
next? Nose jobs on the rhinos?” Some of our other animals were considered “too common,” the
lions and baboons, for example. Lather judiciously traded these for an extra orang-utan from the
Mysore Zoo and a chimpanzee from the Manila Zoo. (As for Elfie, she lived out the rest of her days
at the Trivandrum Zoo.) One zoo asked for “an authentic Brahmin cow” for their children’s zoo.
Lather walked out into the urban jungle of Pondicherry and bought a cow with dark wet eyes, a nice
fat hump and horns so straight and at such right angles to its head that it looked as if it had licked an
electrical outlet. Lather had its horns painted bright orange and little plastic bells fitted to the tips,
for added authenticity.
A deputation of three Americans came. I was very curious. I had never seen real live
Americans. They were pink, fat, friendly, very competent and sweated profusely. They examined
our animals. They put most of them to sleep and then applied stethoscopes to hearts, examined urine
and feces as if horoscopes, drew blood in syringes and analyzed it, fondled humps and bumps,
tapped teeth, blinded eyes with flashlights, pinched skins, stroked and pulled hairs. Poor animals.
They must have thought they were being drafted into the U.S. Army. We got big smiles from the
Americans and bone-crushing, handshakes.
The result was that the animals, like us, got their working papers. They were future Yankees,
and we, future Canucks.
Chapter 35
We left Madras on June 21st, 1977, on the Panamanian-registered Japanese cargo ship
Tsimtsum . Her officers were Japanese, her crew was Taiwanese, and she was large and impressive.
On our last day in Pondicherry I said goodbye to Mamaji, to Mr. and Mr. Kumar, to all my friends
and even to many strangers. Mother was apparelled in her finest sari. Her long tress, artfully folded
back and attached to the back of her head, was adorned with a garland of fresh jasmine flowers. She
looked beautiful. And sad. For she was leaving India, India of the heat and monsoons, of rice fields
and the Cauvery River, of coastlines and stone temples, of bullock carts and colourful trucks, of
friends and known shopkeepers, of Nehru Street and Goubert Salai, of this and that, India so
familiar to her and loved by her. While her men-I fancied myself one already, though I was only
sixteen-were in a hurry to get going, were Winnipeggers at heart already, she lingered.
The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, “Should
we get a pack or two?”
Father replied, “They have tobacco in Canada . And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We
don’t smoke.”
Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun
ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are
the bookshops Higginbothams’? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother’s mind
as she contemplated buying cigarettes.
Animals were sedated, cages were loaded and secured, feed was stored, bunks were assigned,
lines were tossed, and whistles were blown. As the ship was worked out of the dock and piloted out
to sea, I wildly waved goodbye to India. The sun was shining, the breeze was steady, and seagulls
shrieked in the air above us. I was terribly excited.
Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take
life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
Tsimtsum . Her officers were Japanese, her crew was Taiwanese, and she was large and impressive.
On our last day in Pondicherry I said goodbye to Mamaji, to Mr. and Mr. Kumar, to all my friends
and even to many strangers. Mother was apparelled in her finest sari. Her long tress, artfully folded
back and attached to the back of her head, was adorned with a garland of fresh jasmine flowers. She
looked beautiful. And sad. For she was leaving India, India of the heat and monsoons, of rice fields
and the Cauvery River, of coastlines and stone temples, of bullock carts and colourful trucks, of
friends and known shopkeepers, of Nehru Street and Goubert Salai, of this and that, India so
familiar to her and loved by her. While her men-I fancied myself one already, though I was only
sixteen-were in a hurry to get going, were Winnipeggers at heart already, she lingered.
The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, “Should
we get a pack or two?”
Father replied, “They have tobacco in Canada . And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We
don’t smoke.”
Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun
ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are
the bookshops Higginbothams’? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother’s mind
as she contemplated buying cigarettes.
Animals were sedated, cages were loaded and secured, feed was stored, bunks were assigned,
lines were tossed, and whistles were blown. As the ship was worked out of the dock and piloted out
to sea, I wildly waved goodbye to India. The sun was shining, the breeze was steady, and seagulls
shrieked in the air above us. I was terribly excited.
Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take
life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
Chapter 36
The cities are large and memorably crowded in India, but when you leave them
you travel through vast stretches of country where hardly a soul is to be seen. I remember
wondering where 950 million Indians could be hiding.
I could say the same of his house.
I’m a little early. I’ve just set foot on the cement steps of the front porch when a
teenager bursts out the front door. He’s wearing a baseball uniform and carrying baseball
equipment, and he’s in a hurry. When he sees me he stops dead in his tracks, startled. He
turns around and hollers into the house, “Dad! The writer’s here.” To me he says, “Hi,”
and rushes off.
His father comes to the front door. “Hello,” he says.
“That was your son?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yes.” To acknowledge the fact brings a smile to his lips. “I’m sorry you didn’t
meet properly. He’s late for practice. His name is Nikhil. He goes by Nick.”
I’m in the entrance hall. “I didn’t know you had a son,” I say. There’s a barking. A
small mongrel mutt, black and brown, races up to me, panting and sniffing. He jumps up
against my legs. “Or a dog,” I add.
“He’s friendly. Tata, down!”
Tata ignores him. I hear “Hello.” Only this greeting is not short and forceful like
Nick’s. It’s a long, nasal and softly whining HeUooooooooo , with the ooooooooo
reaching for me like a tap on the shoulder or a gentle tug at my pants .
I turn. Leaning against the sofa in the living room, looking up at me bashfully, is a
little brown girl, pretty in pink, very much at home. She’s holding an orange cat in her
arms. Two front legs sticking straight up and a deeply sunk head are all that is visible of
it above her crossed arms. The rest of the cat is hanging all the way down to the floor.
The animal seems quite relaxed about being stretched on the rack in this manner.
“And this is your daughter,” I say.
“Yes. Usha. Usha darling, are you sure Moccasin is comfortable like that?”
Usha drops Moccasin. He flops to the floor unperturbed.
“Hello, Usha,” I say.
She comes up to her father and peeks at me from behind his leg.
“What are you doing, little one?” he says. “Why are you hiding?”
She doesn’t reply, only looks at me with a smile and hides her face.
“How old are you, Usha?” I ask.
She doesn’t reply.
Then Piscine Molitor Patel, known to all as Pi Patel, bends down and picks up his
daughter.
“You know the answer to that question. Hmmm? You’re four years old. One, two,
three, four.”
At each number he softly presses the tip of her nose with his index finger. She
finds this terribly funny. She giggles and buries her face in the crook of his neck.
This story has a happy ending.
Part Two.
The Pacific Ocean
you travel through vast stretches of country where hardly a soul is to be seen. I remember
wondering where 950 million Indians could be hiding.
I could say the same of his house.
I’m a little early. I’ve just set foot on the cement steps of the front porch when a
teenager bursts out the front door. He’s wearing a baseball uniform and carrying baseball
equipment, and he’s in a hurry. When he sees me he stops dead in his tracks, startled. He
turns around and hollers into the house, “Dad! The writer’s here.” To me he says, “Hi,”
and rushes off.
His father comes to the front door. “Hello,” he says.
“That was your son?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yes.” To acknowledge the fact brings a smile to his lips. “I’m sorry you didn’t
meet properly. He’s late for practice. His name is Nikhil. He goes by Nick.”
I’m in the entrance hall. “I didn’t know you had a son,” I say. There’s a barking. A
small mongrel mutt, black and brown, races up to me, panting and sniffing. He jumps up
against my legs. “Or a dog,” I add.
“He’s friendly. Tata, down!”
Tata ignores him. I hear “Hello.” Only this greeting is not short and forceful like
Nick’s. It’s a long, nasal and softly whining HeUooooooooo , with the ooooooooo
reaching for me like a tap on the shoulder or a gentle tug at my pants .
I turn. Leaning against the sofa in the living room, looking up at me bashfully, is a
little brown girl, pretty in pink, very much at home. She’s holding an orange cat in her
arms. Two front legs sticking straight up and a deeply sunk head are all that is visible of
it above her crossed arms. The rest of the cat is hanging all the way down to the floor.
The animal seems quite relaxed about being stretched on the rack in this manner.
“And this is your daughter,” I say.
“Yes. Usha. Usha darling, are you sure Moccasin is comfortable like that?”
Usha drops Moccasin. He flops to the floor unperturbed.
“Hello, Usha,” I say.
She comes up to her father and peeks at me from behind his leg.
“What are you doing, little one?” he says. “Why are you hiding?”
She doesn’t reply, only looks at me with a smile and hides her face.
“How old are you, Usha?” I ask.
She doesn’t reply.
Then Piscine Molitor Patel, known to all as Pi Patel, bends down and picks up his
daughter.
“You know the answer to that question. Hmmm? You’re four years old. One, two,
three, four.”
At each number he softly presses the tip of her nose with his index finger. She
finds this terribly funny. She giggles and buries her face in the crook of his neck.
This story has a happy ending.
Part Two.
The Pacific Ocean
Chapter 37
The ship sank. It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp. Things bubbled at the surface
and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw
something in the water.
I cried, “Richard Parker, is that you? It’ s so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop ! Richard
Parker? Richard Parker? Yes, it is you!”
I could see his head. He was struggling to stay at the surface of the water.
“Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker! Don’t give up,
please. Come to the lifeboat. Do you hear this whistle? Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! You heard
right. Swim, swim! You’re a strong swimmer. It’s not a hundred feet.”
He had seen me. He looked panic-stricken. He started swimming my way. The water about
him was shifting wildly. He looked small and helpless.
“Richard Parker, can you believe what has happened to us? Tell me it’s a bad dream. Tell me
it’s not real. Tell me I’m still in my bunk on the Tsimtsum and I’m tossing and turning and soon I'H
wake up from this nightmare. Tell me I’m still happy. Mother, my tender guardian angel of wisdom,
where are you? And you, Father, my loving worrywart? And you, Ravi, dazzling hero of my
childhood? Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can’t bear it! Treeeeee!
Treeeeee! Treeeeee! ”
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain,
such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
He would not make it. He would drown. He was hardly moving forward and his movements
were weak. His nose and mouth kept dipping underwater. Only his eyes were steadily on me.
“What are you doing, Richard Parker? Don’t you love life? Keep swimming then! Treeeeee!
Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Kick with your legs. Kick! Kick! Kick!”
He stirred in the water and made to swim.
“And what of my extended family-birds, beasts and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every
single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell
without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it
no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can’t reason
give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why
such a vast net if there’s so little fish to catch?”
His head was barely above water. He was looking up, taking in the sky one last time. There
was a lifebuoy in the boat with a rope tied to it . I took hold of it and waved it in the air.
“Do you see this lifebuoy, Richard Parker? Do you see it? Catch hold of it! Humpf ! I’ll try
again. Humpf !”
He was too far. But the sight of the lifebuoy flying his way gave hint hope. He revived and
started beating the water with vigorous, desperate strokes.
“That’s right! One, two. One, two. One, two. Breathe when you can. Watch for the waves.
Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! ”
My heart was chilled to ice. I felt ill with grief. But there was no time for frozen shock. It was
shock in activity. Something in me did not want to give up on life, was unwilling to let go, wanted
to fight to the very end. Where that part of me got the heart, I don’t know.
“Isn’t it ironic, Richard Parker? We’re in hell yet still we’re afraid of immortality. Look how
close you are! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Hurrah, hurrah! You’ve made it, Richard Parker,
you’ve made it. Catch! Humpf l”
I threw the lifebuoy mightily. It fell in the water right in front of him. With his last energies he
stretched forward and took hold of it.
“Hold on tight, I’ll pull you in. Don’t let go. Pull with your eyes while I pull with my hands.
In a few seconds you'll be aboard and we’ll be together. Wait a second. Together? We'll be
together . Have I gone mad?”
I woke up to what I was doing. I yanked on the rope.
“Let go of that lifebuoy, Richard Parker! Let go, I said. I don’t want you here, do you
understand? Go somewhere else. Leave me alone. Get lost. Drown! Drown!”
He was kicking vigorously with his legs. I grabbed an oar. I thrust it at him, meaning to push
him away. I missed and lost hold of the oar.
I grabbed another oar. I dropped it in an oarlock and pulled as hard as I could, meaning to
move the lifeboat away. All I accomplished was to turn the lifeboat a little, bringing one end closer
to Richard Parker.
I would hit him on the head! I lifted the oar in the air.
He was too fast. He reached up and pulled himself aboard.
“Oh my God!”
Ravi was right. Truly I was to be the next goat. I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving
and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat. Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his
feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to his head, all weapons drawn.
His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth.
I turned around, stepped over the zebra and threw myself overboard.
and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw
something in the water.
I cried, “Richard Parker, is that you? It’ s so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop ! Richard
Parker? Richard Parker? Yes, it is you!”
I could see his head. He was struggling to stay at the surface of the water.
“Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker! Don’t give up,
please. Come to the lifeboat. Do you hear this whistle? Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! You heard
right. Swim, swim! You’re a strong swimmer. It’s not a hundred feet.”
He had seen me. He looked panic-stricken. He started swimming my way. The water about
him was shifting wildly. He looked small and helpless.
“Richard Parker, can you believe what has happened to us? Tell me it’s a bad dream. Tell me
it’s not real. Tell me I’m still in my bunk on the Tsimtsum and I’m tossing and turning and soon I'H
wake up from this nightmare. Tell me I’m still happy. Mother, my tender guardian angel of wisdom,
where are you? And you, Father, my loving worrywart? And you, Ravi, dazzling hero of my
childhood? Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can’t bear it! Treeeeee!
Treeeeee! Treeeeee! ”
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain,
such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
He would not make it. He would drown. He was hardly moving forward and his movements
were weak. His nose and mouth kept dipping underwater. Only his eyes were steadily on me.
“What are you doing, Richard Parker? Don’t you love life? Keep swimming then! Treeeeee!
Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Kick with your legs. Kick! Kick! Kick!”
He stirred in the water and made to swim.
“And what of my extended family-birds, beasts and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every
single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell
without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it
no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can’t reason
give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why
such a vast net if there’s so little fish to catch?”
His head was barely above water. He was looking up, taking in the sky one last time. There
was a lifebuoy in the boat with a rope tied to it . I took hold of it and waved it in the air.
“Do you see this lifebuoy, Richard Parker? Do you see it? Catch hold of it! Humpf ! I’ll try
again. Humpf !”
He was too far. But the sight of the lifebuoy flying his way gave hint hope. He revived and
started beating the water with vigorous, desperate strokes.
“That’s right! One, two. One, two. One, two. Breathe when you can. Watch for the waves.
Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! ”
My heart was chilled to ice. I felt ill with grief. But there was no time for frozen shock. It was
shock in activity. Something in me did not want to give up on life, was unwilling to let go, wanted
to fight to the very end. Where that part of me got the heart, I don’t know.
“Isn’t it ironic, Richard Parker? We’re in hell yet still we’re afraid of immortality. Look how
close you are! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Treeeeee! Hurrah, hurrah! You’ve made it, Richard Parker,
you’ve made it. Catch! Humpf l”
I threw the lifebuoy mightily. It fell in the water right in front of him. With his last energies he
stretched forward and took hold of it.
“Hold on tight, I’ll pull you in. Don’t let go. Pull with your eyes while I pull with my hands.
In a few seconds you'll be aboard and we’ll be together. Wait a second. Together? We'll be
together . Have I gone mad?”
I woke up to what I was doing. I yanked on the rope.
“Let go of that lifebuoy, Richard Parker! Let go, I said. I don’t want you here, do you
understand? Go somewhere else. Leave me alone. Get lost. Drown! Drown!”
He was kicking vigorously with his legs. I grabbed an oar. I thrust it at him, meaning to push
him away. I missed and lost hold of the oar.
I grabbed another oar. I dropped it in an oarlock and pulled as hard as I could, meaning to
move the lifeboat away. All I accomplished was to turn the lifeboat a little, bringing one end closer
to Richard Parker.
I would hit him on the head! I lifted the oar in the air.
He was too fast. He reached up and pulled himself aboard.
“Oh my God!”
Ravi was right. Truly I was to be the next goat. I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving
and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat. Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his
feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to his head, all weapons drawn.
His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth.
I turned around, stepped over the zebra and threw myself overboard.
Chapter 38
I don’t understand. Lor days the ship had pushed on, bullishly indifferent to its surroundings.
The sun shone, rain fell, winds blew, currents flowed, the sea built up hills, the sea dug up
valleys-the Tsimtsum did not care. It moved with the slow, massive confidence of a continent.
I had bought a map of the world for the trip; I had set it up in our cabin against a cork
billboard. Every morning I got our position from the control bridge and marked it on the map with
an orange tipped pin. We sailed from Madras across the Bay of Bengal, down through the Strait of
Malacca, around Singapore and up to Manila. I loved every minute of it. It was a thrill to be on a
ship. Taking care of the animals kept us very busy. Every night we fell into bed weary to our bones.
We were in Manila for two days, a question of fresh feed, new cargo and, we were told, the
performing of routine maintenance work on the engines. I paid attention only to the first two. The
fresh feed included a ton of bananas, and the new cargo, a female Congo chimpanzee, part of
Father’s wheeling and dealing. A ton of bananas bristles with a good three, four pounds of big black
spiders. A chimpanzee is like a smaller, leaner gorilla, but meaner-looking, with less of the
melancholy gentleness of its larger cousin. A chimpanzee shudders and grimaces when it touches a
big black spider, like you and I would do, before squashing it angrily with its knuckles, not
something you and I would do. I thought bananas and a chimpanzee were more interesting than a
loud, filthy mechanical contraption in the dark bowels of a ship. Ravi spent his days there, watching
the men work. Something was wrong with the engines, he said. Did something go wrong with the
fixing of them? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone will ever know. The answer is a mystery lying at
the bottom of thousands of feet of water.
We left Manila and entered the Pacific. On our fourth day out, midway to Midway, we sank.
The ship vanished into a pinprick hole on my map. A mountain collapsed before my eyes and
disappeared beneath my feet. All around me was the vomit of a dyspeptic ship. I felt sick to my
stomach. I felt shock. I felt a great emptiness within me, which then filled with silence. My chest
hurt with pain and fear for days afterwards.
I think there was an explosion. But I can’t be sure. It happened while I was sleeping. It woke
me up. The ship was no luxury liner. It was a grimy, hardworking cargo ship not designed for
paying passengers or for their comfort. There were all kinds of noises all the time. It was precisely
because the level of noise was so uniform that we slept like babies. It was a form of silence that
nothing disturbed, not Ravi’s snoring nor my talking in my sleep. So the explosion, if there was
one, was not a new noise. It was an irregular noise. I woke up with a start, as if Ravi had burst a
balloon in my ears. I looked at my watch. It was just after four-thirty in the morning. I leaned over
and looked down at the bunk below. Ravi was still sleeping.
I dressed and climbed down. Normally I’m a sound sleeper. Normally I would have gone back
to sleep. I don’t know why I got up that night. It was more the sort of thing Ravi would do. He liked
the word beckon ; he would have said, “Adventure beckons,” and would have gone off to prowl
around the ship. The level of noise was back to normal again, but with a different quality perhaps,
muffled maybe.
I shook Ravi. I said, “Ravi! There was a funny noise. Let’s go exploring.”
He looked at me sleepily. He shook his head and turned over, pulling the sheet up to his
cheek. Oh, Ravi!
I opened the cabin door.
I remember walking down the corridor. Day or night it looked the same. But I felt the night in
me. I stopped at Father and Mother’s door and considered knocking on it. I remember looking at my
watch and deciding against it. Father liked his sleep. I decided I would climb to the main deck and
catch the dawn. Maybe I would see a shooting star. I was thinking about that, about shooting stars,
as I climbed the stairs. We were two levels below the main deck. I had already forgotten about the
funny noise.
It was only when I had pushed open the heavy door leading onto the main deck that I realized
what the weather was like. Did it qualify as a storm? It’s true there was rain, but it wasn’t so very
hard. It certainly wasn’t a driving rain, like you see during the monsoons. And there was wind. I
suppose some of the gusts would have upset umbrellas. But I walked through it without much
difficulty. As for the sea, it looked rough, but to a landlubber the sea is always impresive and
forbidding, beautiful and dangerous. Waves were reaching up, and their white foam, caught by the
wind, was being whipped against the side of the ship. But I’d seen that on other days and the ship
hadn’t sunk. A cargo ship is a huge and stable structure, a feat of engineering. It’s designed to stay
afloat under the most adverse conditions . Weather like this surely wouldn’t sink a ship? Why, I only
had to close a door and the storm was gone. I advanced onto the deck. I gripped the railing and
faced the elements. This was adventure.
“Canada, here I come!” I shouted as I was soaked and chilled. I felt very brave. It was dark
still, but there was enough light to see by. Light on pandemonium it was. Nature can put on a
thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget
for special effects is absolutely unlimited. What I had before me was a spectacle of wind and water,
an earthquake of the senses, that even Hollywood couldn’t orchestrate. But the earthquake stopped
at the ground beneath my feet. The ground beneath my feet was solid. I was a spectator safely
ensconced in his seat.
It was when I looked up at a lifeboat on the bridge castle that I started to worry. The lifeboat
wasn’t hanging straight down. It was leaning in from its davits. I turned and looked at my hands.
My knuckles were white. The thing was, I wasn’t holding on so tightly because of the weather, but
because otherwise I would fall in towards the ship. The ship was listing to port, to the other side. It
wasn’t a severe list, but enough to surprise me. When I looked overboard the drop wasn’t sheer any
more. I could see the ship’s great black side.
A shiver of cold went through me. I decided it was a storm after all. Time to return to safety. I
let go, hotfooted it to the wall, moved over and pulled open the door.
Inside the ship, there were noises. Deep structural groans. I stumbled and fell. No harm done.
I got up. With the help of the handrails I went down the stairwell four steps at a time. I had gone
down just one level when I saw water. Lots of water. It was blocking my way. It was surging from
below like a riotous crowd, raging, frothing and boiling. Stairs vanished into watery darkness. I
couldn’t believe my eyes. What was this water doing here? Where had it come from? I stood nailed
to the spot, frightened and incredulous and ignorant of what I should do next. Down there was
where my family was.
I ran up the stairs. I got to the main deck. The weather wasn’t entertaining any more. I was
very afraid. Now it was plain and obvious: the ship was listing badly. And it wasn’t level the other
way either. There was a noticeable incline going from bow to stern. I looked overboard. The water
didn’t look to be eighty feet away. The ship was sinking. My mind could hardly conceive it. It was
as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
Where were the officers and the crew? What were they doing? Towards the bow I saw some
men running in the gloom. I thought I saw some animals too, but I dismissed the sight as illusion
crafted by rain and shadow. We had the hatch covers over their bay pulled open when the weather
was good, but at all times the animals were kept confined to their cages. These were dangerous wild
animals we were transporting, not farm livestock. Above me, on the bridge, I thought I heard some
men shouting.
The ship shook and there was that sound, the monstrous metallic burp. What was it? Was it
the collective scream of humans and animals protesting their oncoming death? Was it the ship itself
giving up the ghost? I fell over. I got to my feet. I looked overboard again. The sea was rising. The
waves were getting closer. We were sinking fast.
I clearly heard monkeys shrieking. Something was shaking the deck, A gaur-an Indian wild
ox-exploded out of the rain and thundered by me, terrified, out of control, berserk. I looked at it,
dumbstruck and amazed. Who in God’s name had let it out?
I ran for the stairs to the bridge. Up there was where the officers were, the only people on the
ship who spoke English, the masters of our destiny here, the ones who would right this wrong. They
would explain everything. They would take care of my family and me. I climbed to the middle
bridge. There was no one on the starboard side. I ran to the port side. I saw three men, crew
members. I fell. I got up. They were looking overboard. I shouted. They turned. They looked at me
and at each other. They spoke a few words. They came towards me quickly. I felt gratitude and
relief welling up in me. I said, “Thank God I’ve found you. What is happening? I am very scared.
There is water at the bottom of the ship. I am worried about my family. I can’t get to the level
where our cabins are. Is this normal? Do you think-”
One of the men interrupted me by thrusting a lifejacket into my arms and shouting something
in Chinese. I noticed an orange whistle dangling from the life jacket. The men were nodding
vigorously at me. When they took hold of me and lifted me in their strong arms, I thought nothing
of it. I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried
me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
The sun shone, rain fell, winds blew, currents flowed, the sea built up hills, the sea dug up
valleys-the Tsimtsum did not care. It moved with the slow, massive confidence of a continent.
I had bought a map of the world for the trip; I had set it up in our cabin against a cork
billboard. Every morning I got our position from the control bridge and marked it on the map with
an orange tipped pin. We sailed from Madras across the Bay of Bengal, down through the Strait of
Malacca, around Singapore and up to Manila. I loved every minute of it. It was a thrill to be on a
ship. Taking care of the animals kept us very busy. Every night we fell into bed weary to our bones.
We were in Manila for two days, a question of fresh feed, new cargo and, we were told, the
performing of routine maintenance work on the engines. I paid attention only to the first two. The
fresh feed included a ton of bananas, and the new cargo, a female Congo chimpanzee, part of
Father’s wheeling and dealing. A ton of bananas bristles with a good three, four pounds of big black
spiders. A chimpanzee is like a smaller, leaner gorilla, but meaner-looking, with less of the
melancholy gentleness of its larger cousin. A chimpanzee shudders and grimaces when it touches a
big black spider, like you and I would do, before squashing it angrily with its knuckles, not
something you and I would do. I thought bananas and a chimpanzee were more interesting than a
loud, filthy mechanical contraption in the dark bowels of a ship. Ravi spent his days there, watching
the men work. Something was wrong with the engines, he said. Did something go wrong with the
fixing of them? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone will ever know. The answer is a mystery lying at
the bottom of thousands of feet of water.
We left Manila and entered the Pacific. On our fourth day out, midway to Midway, we sank.
The ship vanished into a pinprick hole on my map. A mountain collapsed before my eyes and
disappeared beneath my feet. All around me was the vomit of a dyspeptic ship. I felt sick to my
stomach. I felt shock. I felt a great emptiness within me, which then filled with silence. My chest
hurt with pain and fear for days afterwards.
I think there was an explosion. But I can’t be sure. It happened while I was sleeping. It woke
me up. The ship was no luxury liner. It was a grimy, hardworking cargo ship not designed for
paying passengers or for their comfort. There were all kinds of noises all the time. It was precisely
because the level of noise was so uniform that we slept like babies. It was a form of silence that
nothing disturbed, not Ravi’s snoring nor my talking in my sleep. So the explosion, if there was
one, was not a new noise. It was an irregular noise. I woke up with a start, as if Ravi had burst a
balloon in my ears. I looked at my watch. It was just after four-thirty in the morning. I leaned over
and looked down at the bunk below. Ravi was still sleeping.
I dressed and climbed down. Normally I’m a sound sleeper. Normally I would have gone back
to sleep. I don’t know why I got up that night. It was more the sort of thing Ravi would do. He liked
the word beckon ; he would have said, “Adventure beckons,” and would have gone off to prowl
around the ship. The level of noise was back to normal again, but with a different quality perhaps,
muffled maybe.
I shook Ravi. I said, “Ravi! There was a funny noise. Let’s go exploring.”
He looked at me sleepily. He shook his head and turned over, pulling the sheet up to his
cheek. Oh, Ravi!
I opened the cabin door.
I remember walking down the corridor. Day or night it looked the same. But I felt the night in
me. I stopped at Father and Mother’s door and considered knocking on it. I remember looking at my
watch and deciding against it. Father liked his sleep. I decided I would climb to the main deck and
catch the dawn. Maybe I would see a shooting star. I was thinking about that, about shooting stars,
as I climbed the stairs. We were two levels below the main deck. I had already forgotten about the
funny noise.
It was only when I had pushed open the heavy door leading onto the main deck that I realized
what the weather was like. Did it qualify as a storm? It’s true there was rain, but it wasn’t so very
hard. It certainly wasn’t a driving rain, like you see during the monsoons. And there was wind. I
suppose some of the gusts would have upset umbrellas. But I walked through it without much
difficulty. As for the sea, it looked rough, but to a landlubber the sea is always impresive and
forbidding, beautiful and dangerous. Waves were reaching up, and their white foam, caught by the
wind, was being whipped against the side of the ship. But I’d seen that on other days and the ship
hadn’t sunk. A cargo ship is a huge and stable structure, a feat of engineering. It’s designed to stay
afloat under the most adverse conditions . Weather like this surely wouldn’t sink a ship? Why, I only
had to close a door and the storm was gone. I advanced onto the deck. I gripped the railing and
faced the elements. This was adventure.
“Canada, here I come!” I shouted as I was soaked and chilled. I felt very brave. It was dark
still, but there was enough light to see by. Light on pandemonium it was. Nature can put on a
thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget
for special effects is absolutely unlimited. What I had before me was a spectacle of wind and water,
an earthquake of the senses, that even Hollywood couldn’t orchestrate. But the earthquake stopped
at the ground beneath my feet. The ground beneath my feet was solid. I was a spectator safely
ensconced in his seat.
It was when I looked up at a lifeboat on the bridge castle that I started to worry. The lifeboat
wasn’t hanging straight down. It was leaning in from its davits. I turned and looked at my hands.
My knuckles were white. The thing was, I wasn’t holding on so tightly because of the weather, but
because otherwise I would fall in towards the ship. The ship was listing to port, to the other side. It
wasn’t a severe list, but enough to surprise me. When I looked overboard the drop wasn’t sheer any
more. I could see the ship’s great black side.
A shiver of cold went through me. I decided it was a storm after all. Time to return to safety. I
let go, hotfooted it to the wall, moved over and pulled open the door.
Inside the ship, there were noises. Deep structural groans. I stumbled and fell. No harm done.
I got up. With the help of the handrails I went down the stairwell four steps at a time. I had gone
down just one level when I saw water. Lots of water. It was blocking my way. It was surging from
below like a riotous crowd, raging, frothing and boiling. Stairs vanished into watery darkness. I
couldn’t believe my eyes. What was this water doing here? Where had it come from? I stood nailed
to the spot, frightened and incredulous and ignorant of what I should do next. Down there was
where my family was.
I ran up the stairs. I got to the main deck. The weather wasn’t entertaining any more. I was
very afraid. Now it was plain and obvious: the ship was listing badly. And it wasn’t level the other
way either. There was a noticeable incline going from bow to stern. I looked overboard. The water
didn’t look to be eighty feet away. The ship was sinking. My mind could hardly conceive it. It was
as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
Where were the officers and the crew? What were they doing? Towards the bow I saw some
men running in the gloom. I thought I saw some animals too, but I dismissed the sight as illusion
crafted by rain and shadow. We had the hatch covers over their bay pulled open when the weather
was good, but at all times the animals were kept confined to their cages. These were dangerous wild
animals we were transporting, not farm livestock. Above me, on the bridge, I thought I heard some
men shouting.
The ship shook and there was that sound, the monstrous metallic burp. What was it? Was it
the collective scream of humans and animals protesting their oncoming death? Was it the ship itself
giving up the ghost? I fell over. I got to my feet. I looked overboard again. The sea was rising. The
waves were getting closer. We were sinking fast.
I clearly heard monkeys shrieking. Something was shaking the deck, A gaur-an Indian wild
ox-exploded out of the rain and thundered by me, terrified, out of control, berserk. I looked at it,
dumbstruck and amazed. Who in God’s name had let it out?
I ran for the stairs to the bridge. Up there was where the officers were, the only people on the
ship who spoke English, the masters of our destiny here, the ones who would right this wrong. They
would explain everything. They would take care of my family and me. I climbed to the middle
bridge. There was no one on the starboard side. I ran to the port side. I saw three men, crew
members. I fell. I got up. They were looking overboard. I shouted. They turned. They looked at me
and at each other. They spoke a few words. They came towards me quickly. I felt gratitude and
relief welling up in me. I said, “Thank God I’ve found you. What is happening? I am very scared.
There is water at the bottom of the ship. I am worried about my family. I can’t get to the level
where our cabins are. Is this normal? Do you think-”
One of the men interrupted me by thrusting a lifejacket into my arms and shouting something
in Chinese. I noticed an orange whistle dangling from the life jacket. The men were nodding
vigorously at me. When they took hold of me and lifted me in their strong arms, I thought nothing
of it. I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried
me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
Chapter 39
I landed with a trampoline-like bounce on the half-unrolled tarpaulin covering a lifeboat forty
feet below. It was a miracle I didn’t hurt myself. I lost the life jacket, except for the whistle, which
stayed in my hand. The lifeboat had been lowered partway and left to hang. It was leaning out from
its davits, swinging in the storm, some twenty feet above the water. I looked up. Two of the men
were looking down at me, pointing wildly at the lifeboat and shouting. I didn’t understand what
they wanted me to do. I thought they were going to jump in after me. Instead they turned their
heads, looked horrified, and this creature appeared in the air, leaping with the grace of a racehorse .
The zebra missed the tarpaulin. It was a male Grant, weighing over five hundred pounds. It landed
with a loud crash on the last bench, smashing it and shaking the whole lifeboat. The animal called
out. I might have expected the braying of an ass or the neighing of a horse. It was nothing of the
sort. It could only be called a burst of barking, a kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha put out at the
highest pitch of distress. The creature’s lips were widely parted, standing upright and quivering,
revealing yellow teeth and dark pink gums. The lifeboat fell through the air and we hit the seething
water.
feet below. It was a miracle I didn’t hurt myself. I lost the life jacket, except for the whistle, which
stayed in my hand. The lifeboat had been lowered partway and left to hang. It was leaning out from
its davits, swinging in the storm, some twenty feet above the water. I looked up. Two of the men
were looking down at me, pointing wildly at the lifeboat and shouting. I didn’t understand what
they wanted me to do. I thought they were going to jump in after me. Instead they turned their
heads, looked horrified, and this creature appeared in the air, leaping with the grace of a racehorse .
The zebra missed the tarpaulin. It was a male Grant, weighing over five hundred pounds. It landed
with a loud crash on the last bench, smashing it and shaking the whole lifeboat. The animal called
out. I might have expected the braying of an ass or the neighing of a horse. It was nothing of the
sort. It could only be called a burst of barking, a kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha, kwa-ha-ha put out at the
highest pitch of distress. The creature’s lips were widely parted, standing upright and quivering,
revealing yellow teeth and dark pink gums. The lifeboat fell through the air and we hit the seething
water.
Chapter 40
Richard Parker did not jump into the water after me. The oar I intended to use as a club
floated. I held on to it as I reached for the lifebuoy, now vacant of its previous occupant. It was
terrifying to be in the water. It was black and cold and in a rage. I felt as if I were at the bottom of a
crumbling well. Water kept crashing down on me. It stung my eyes. It pulled me down. I could
hardly breathe. If there hadn’t been the lifebuoy I wouldn’t have lasted a minute.
I saw a triangle slicing the water fifteen feet away. It was a shark’ s fin. An awful tingle, cold
and liquid, went up and down my spine. I swam as fast as I could to one end of the lifeboat, the end
still covered by the tarpaulin. I pushed myself up on the lifebuoy with my arms. I couldn’t see
Richard Parker. He wasn’t on the tarpaulin or on a bench. He was at the bottom of the lifeboat. I
pushed myself up again. All I could see, briefly, at the other end, was the zebra’s head thrashing
about. As I fell back into the water another shark’s fin glided right before me.
The bright orange tarpaulin was held down by a strong nylon rope that wove its way between
metal grommets in the tarpaulin and blunt hooks on the side of the boat. I happened to be treading
water at the bow. The tarpaulin was not as securely fixed going over the stem-which had a very
short prow, what in a face would be called a snub nose-as it was elsewhere around the boat. There
was a little looseness in the tarpaulin as the rope went from one hook on one side of the stem to the
next hook on the other side . I lifted the oar in the air and I shoved its handle into this looseness, into
this life-saving detail. I pushed the oar in as far as it would go. The lifeboat now had a prow
projecting over the waves, if crookedly. I pulled myself up and wrapped my legs around the oar.
The oar handle pushed up against the tarpaulin, but tarpaulin, rope and oar held. I was out of the
water, if only by a fluctuating two, three feet. The crest of the larger waves kept striking me.
I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in
front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me. Had I considered my prospects in the light
of reason, I surely would have given up and let go of the oar, hoping that I might drown before
being eaten. But I don’t recall that I had a single thought during those first minutes of relative
safety. I didn’t even notice daybreak. I held on to the oar, I just held on, God only knows why.
After a while I made good use of the lifebuoy. I lifted it out of the water and put the oar
through its hole. I worked it down until the ring was hugging me. Now it was only with my legs that
I had to hold on. If Richard Parker appeared, it would be more awkward to drop from the oar, but
one terror at a time, Pacific before tiger.
floated. I held on to it as I reached for the lifebuoy, now vacant of its previous occupant. It was
terrifying to be in the water. It was black and cold and in a rage. I felt as if I were at the bottom of a
crumbling well. Water kept crashing down on me. It stung my eyes. It pulled me down. I could
hardly breathe. If there hadn’t been the lifebuoy I wouldn’t have lasted a minute.
I saw a triangle slicing the water fifteen feet away. It was a shark’ s fin. An awful tingle, cold
and liquid, went up and down my spine. I swam as fast as I could to one end of the lifeboat, the end
still covered by the tarpaulin. I pushed myself up on the lifebuoy with my arms. I couldn’t see
Richard Parker. He wasn’t on the tarpaulin or on a bench. He was at the bottom of the lifeboat. I
pushed myself up again. All I could see, briefly, at the other end, was the zebra’s head thrashing
about. As I fell back into the water another shark’s fin glided right before me.
The bright orange tarpaulin was held down by a strong nylon rope that wove its way between
metal grommets in the tarpaulin and blunt hooks on the side of the boat. I happened to be treading
water at the bow. The tarpaulin was not as securely fixed going over the stem-which had a very
short prow, what in a face would be called a snub nose-as it was elsewhere around the boat. There
was a little looseness in the tarpaulin as the rope went from one hook on one side of the stem to the
next hook on the other side . I lifted the oar in the air and I shoved its handle into this looseness, into
this life-saving detail. I pushed the oar in as far as it would go. The lifeboat now had a prow
projecting over the waves, if crookedly. I pulled myself up and wrapped my legs around the oar.
The oar handle pushed up against the tarpaulin, but tarpaulin, rope and oar held. I was out of the
water, if only by a fluctuating two, three feet. The crest of the larger waves kept striking me.
I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in
front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me. Had I considered my prospects in the light
of reason, I surely would have given up and let go of the oar, hoping that I might drown before
being eaten. But I don’t recall that I had a single thought during those first minutes of relative
safety. I didn’t even notice daybreak. I held on to the oar, I just held on, God only knows why.
After a while I made good use of the lifebuoy. I lifted it out of the water and put the oar
through its hole. I worked it down until the ring was hugging me. Now it was only with my legs that
I had to hold on. If Richard Parker appeared, it would be more awkward to drop from the oar, but
one terror at a time, Pacific before tiger.
Chapter 41
The elements allowed me to go on living. The lifeboat did not sink. Richard Parker kept out of
sight. The sharks prowled but did not lunge. The waves splashed me but did not pull me off.
I watched the ship as it disappeared with much burbling and belching. Lights flickered and
went out. I looked about for my family, for survivors, for another lifeboat, for anything that might
bring me hope. There was nothing. Only rain, marauding waves of black ocean and the flotsam of
tragedy.
The darkness melted away from the sky. The rain stopped.
I could not stay in the position I was in forever. I was cold. My neck was sore from holding
up my head and from all the craning I had been doing. My back hurt from leaning against the
lifebuoy. And I needed to be higher up if I were to see other lifeboats.
I inched my way along the oar till my feet were against the bow of the boat. I had to proceed
with extreme caution. My guess was that Richard Parker was on the floor of the lifeboat beneath the
tarpaulin, his back to me, facing the zebra, which he had no doubt killed by now. Of the five senses,
tigers rely the most on their sight. Their eyesight is very keen, especially in detecting motion. Their
hearing is good. Their smell is average. I mean compared to other animals, of course. Next to
Richard Parker, I was deaf, blind and nose-dead. But at the moment he could not see me, and in my
wet condition could probably not smell me, and what with the whistling of the wind and the hissing
of the sea as waves broke, if I were careful, he would not hear me. I had a chance so long as he did
not sense me. If he did, he would kill me right away. Could he burst through the tarpaulin, I
wondered.
Fear and reason fought over the answer. Fear said Yes. He was a fierce, 450-pound carnivore.
Each of his claws was as sharp as a knife. Reason said No. The tarpaulin was sturdy canvas, not a
Japanese paper wall. I had landed upon it from a height. Richard Parker could shred it with his
claws with a little time and effort, but he couldn’t pop through it like a jack-in-the-box. And he had
not seen me. Since he had not seen me, he had no reason to claw his way through it.
I slid along the oar. I brought both my legs to one side of the oar and placed my feet on the
gunnel. The gunnel is the top edge of a boat, the rim if you want. I moved a little more till my legs
were on the boat. I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon of the tarpaulin. Any second I expected to see
Richard Parker rising up and coming for me. Several times I had fits of fearful trembling. Precisely
where I wanted to be most still-my legs-was where I trembled most. My legs drummed upon the
tarpaulin. A more obvious rapping on Richard Parker’s door couldn’t be imagined. The trembling
spread to my arms and it was all I could do to hold on. Each fit passed.
When enough of my body was on the boat I pulled myself up. I looked beyond the end of the
tarpaulin. I was surprised to see that the zebra was still alive. It lay near the stern, where it had
fallen, listless, but its stomach was still panting and its eyes were still moving, expressing terror. It
was on its side, facing me, its head and neck awkwardly propped against the boat’s side bench. It
had badly broken a rear leg. The angle of it was completely unnatural. Bone protruded through skin
and there was bleeding. Only its slim front legs had a semblance of normal position. They were bent
and neatly tucked against its twisted torso. From time to time the zebra shook its head and barked
and snorted. Otherwise it lay quietly.
It was a lovely animal. Its wet markings glowed brightly white and intensely black. I was so
eaten up by anxiety that I couldn’t dwell on it; still, in passing, as a faint afterthought, the queer,
clean, artistic boldness of its design and the fineness of its head struck me . Of greater significance
to me was the strange fact that Richard Parker had not killed it. In the normal course of things he
should have killed the zebra. That’s what predators do: they kill prey. In the present circumstances,
where Richard Parker would be under tremendous mental strain, fear should have brought out an
exceptional level of aggression. The zebra should have been properly butchered.
The reason behind its spared life was revealed shortly. It froze my blood-and then brought a
slight measure of relief. A head appeared beyond the end of the tarpaulin. It looked at me in a
direct, frightened way, ducked under, appeared again, ducked under again, appeared once more,
disappeared a last time. It was the bear-like, balding-looking head of a spotted hyena. Our zoo had a
clan of six, two dominant females and four subordinate males. They were supposed to be going to
Minnesota. The one here was a male. I recognized it by its right ear, which was badly torn, its
healed jagged edge testimony to old violence. Now I understood why Richard Parker had not killed
the zebra: he was no longer aboard. There couldn’t be both a hyena and a tiger in such a small
space. He must have fallen off the tarpaulin and drowned.
I had to explain to myself how a hyena had come to be on the lifeboat. I doubted hyenas were
capable of swimming in open seas. I concluded that it must have been on board all along, hiding
under the tarpaulin, and that I hadn’t noticed it when I landed with a bounce. I realized something
else: the hyena was the reason those sailors had thrown me into the lifeboat. They weren’t trying to
save my life. That was the last of their concerns. They were using me as fodder. They were hoping
that the hyena would attack me and that somehow I would get rid of it and make the boat safe for
them, no matter if it cost me my life. Now I knew what they were pointing at so furiously just
before the zebra appeared.
I never thought that finding myself confined in a small space with a spotted hyena would be
good news, but there you go. In fact, the good news was double: if it weren’t for this hyena, the
sailor wouldn’t have thrown me into the lifeboat and I would have stayed on the ship and I surely
would have drowned; and if I had to share quarters with a wild animal, better the upfront ferocity of
a dog than the power and stealth of a cat. I breathed the smallest sigh of relief. As a precautionary
measure I moved onto the oar. I sat astride it, on the rounded edge of the speared lifebuoy, my left
foot against the tip of the prow, my right foot on the gunnel. It was comfortable enough and I was
facing the boat.
I looked about. Nothing but sea and sky. The same when we were at the top of a swell. The
sea briefly imitated every land feature-every hill, every valley, every plain. Accelerated
geotectonics. Around the world in eighty swells. But nowhere on it could I find my family. Things
floated in the water but none that brought me hope. I could see no other lifeboats.
The weather was changing rapidly. The sea, so immense, so breathtakingly immense, was
settling into a smooth and steady motion, with the waves at heel; the wind was softening to a
tuneful breeze; fluffy, radiantly white clouds were beginning to light up in a vast fathomless dome
of delicate pale blue. It was the dawn of a beautiful day in the Pacific Ocean. My shirt was already
beginning to dry. The night had vanished as quickly as the ship.
I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of
immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands at my
head.
sight. The sharks prowled but did not lunge. The waves splashed me but did not pull me off.
I watched the ship as it disappeared with much burbling and belching. Lights flickered and
went out. I looked about for my family, for survivors, for another lifeboat, for anything that might
bring me hope. There was nothing. Only rain, marauding waves of black ocean and the flotsam of
tragedy.
The darkness melted away from the sky. The rain stopped.
I could not stay in the position I was in forever. I was cold. My neck was sore from holding
up my head and from all the craning I had been doing. My back hurt from leaning against the
lifebuoy. And I needed to be higher up if I were to see other lifeboats.
I inched my way along the oar till my feet were against the bow of the boat. I had to proceed
with extreme caution. My guess was that Richard Parker was on the floor of the lifeboat beneath the
tarpaulin, his back to me, facing the zebra, which he had no doubt killed by now. Of the five senses,
tigers rely the most on their sight. Their eyesight is very keen, especially in detecting motion. Their
hearing is good. Their smell is average. I mean compared to other animals, of course. Next to
Richard Parker, I was deaf, blind and nose-dead. But at the moment he could not see me, and in my
wet condition could probably not smell me, and what with the whistling of the wind and the hissing
of the sea as waves broke, if I were careful, he would not hear me. I had a chance so long as he did
not sense me. If he did, he would kill me right away. Could he burst through the tarpaulin, I
wondered.
Fear and reason fought over the answer. Fear said Yes. He was a fierce, 450-pound carnivore.
Each of his claws was as sharp as a knife. Reason said No. The tarpaulin was sturdy canvas, not a
Japanese paper wall. I had landed upon it from a height. Richard Parker could shred it with his
claws with a little time and effort, but he couldn’t pop through it like a jack-in-the-box. And he had
not seen me. Since he had not seen me, he had no reason to claw his way through it.
I slid along the oar. I brought both my legs to one side of the oar and placed my feet on the
gunnel. The gunnel is the top edge of a boat, the rim if you want. I moved a little more till my legs
were on the boat. I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon of the tarpaulin. Any second I expected to see
Richard Parker rising up and coming for me. Several times I had fits of fearful trembling. Precisely
where I wanted to be most still-my legs-was where I trembled most. My legs drummed upon the
tarpaulin. A more obvious rapping on Richard Parker’s door couldn’t be imagined. The trembling
spread to my arms and it was all I could do to hold on. Each fit passed.
When enough of my body was on the boat I pulled myself up. I looked beyond the end of the
tarpaulin. I was surprised to see that the zebra was still alive. It lay near the stern, where it had
fallen, listless, but its stomach was still panting and its eyes were still moving, expressing terror. It
was on its side, facing me, its head and neck awkwardly propped against the boat’s side bench. It
had badly broken a rear leg. The angle of it was completely unnatural. Bone protruded through skin
and there was bleeding. Only its slim front legs had a semblance of normal position. They were bent
and neatly tucked against its twisted torso. From time to time the zebra shook its head and barked
and snorted. Otherwise it lay quietly.
It was a lovely animal. Its wet markings glowed brightly white and intensely black. I was so
eaten up by anxiety that I couldn’t dwell on it; still, in passing, as a faint afterthought, the queer,
clean, artistic boldness of its design and the fineness of its head struck me . Of greater significance
to me was the strange fact that Richard Parker had not killed it. In the normal course of things he
should have killed the zebra. That’s what predators do: they kill prey. In the present circumstances,
where Richard Parker would be under tremendous mental strain, fear should have brought out an
exceptional level of aggression. The zebra should have been properly butchered.
The reason behind its spared life was revealed shortly. It froze my blood-and then brought a
slight measure of relief. A head appeared beyond the end of the tarpaulin. It looked at me in a
direct, frightened way, ducked under, appeared again, ducked under again, appeared once more,
disappeared a last time. It was the bear-like, balding-looking head of a spotted hyena. Our zoo had a
clan of six, two dominant females and four subordinate males. They were supposed to be going to
Minnesota. The one here was a male. I recognized it by its right ear, which was badly torn, its
healed jagged edge testimony to old violence. Now I understood why Richard Parker had not killed
the zebra: he was no longer aboard. There couldn’t be both a hyena and a tiger in such a small
space. He must have fallen off the tarpaulin and drowned.
I had to explain to myself how a hyena had come to be on the lifeboat. I doubted hyenas were
capable of swimming in open seas. I concluded that it must have been on board all along, hiding
under the tarpaulin, and that I hadn’t noticed it when I landed with a bounce. I realized something
else: the hyena was the reason those sailors had thrown me into the lifeboat. They weren’t trying to
save my life. That was the last of their concerns. They were using me as fodder. They were hoping
that the hyena would attack me and that somehow I would get rid of it and make the boat safe for
them, no matter if it cost me my life. Now I knew what they were pointing at so furiously just
before the zebra appeared.
I never thought that finding myself confined in a small space with a spotted hyena would be
good news, but there you go. In fact, the good news was double: if it weren’t for this hyena, the
sailor wouldn’t have thrown me into the lifeboat and I would have stayed on the ship and I surely
would have drowned; and if I had to share quarters with a wild animal, better the upfront ferocity of
a dog than the power and stealth of a cat. I breathed the smallest sigh of relief. As a precautionary
measure I moved onto the oar. I sat astride it, on the rounded edge of the speared lifebuoy, my left
foot against the tip of the prow, my right foot on the gunnel. It was comfortable enough and I was
facing the boat.
I looked about. Nothing but sea and sky. The same when we were at the top of a swell. The
sea briefly imitated every land feature-every hill, every valley, every plain. Accelerated
geotectonics. Around the world in eighty swells. But nowhere on it could I find my family. Things
floated in the water but none that brought me hope. I could see no other lifeboats.
The weather was changing rapidly. The sea, so immense, so breathtakingly immense, was
settling into a smooth and steady motion, with the waves at heel; the wind was softening to a
tuneful breeze; fluffy, radiantly white clouds were beginning to light up in a vast fathomless dome
of delicate pale blue. It was the dawn of a beautiful day in the Pacific Ocean. My shirt was already
beginning to dry. The night had vanished as quickly as the ship.
I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of
immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands at my
head.
Chapter 42
She came floating on an island of bananas in a halo of light, as lovely the Virgin Mary. The
rising sun was behind her. Her flaming hair looked stunning.
I cried, “Oh blessed Great Mother, Pondicherry fertility goddess, provider of milk and love,
wondrous arm spread of comfort, terror of ticks, picker-up of crying ones, are you to witness this
tragedy too? It’s not right that gentleness meet horror. Better that you had died right away. How
bitterly glad I am to see you. You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with
me, but pain because it won’t be for long. What do you know about the sea? Nothing. What do I
know about the sea? Nothing. Without a driver this bus is lost. Our lives are over. Come aboard if
your destination is oblivion-it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the
window seat, if you want. But it’s a sad view. Oh, enough of this dissembling. Let me say it plainly:
I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Not the spiders, please.”
It was Orange Juice-so called because she tended to drool-our prize Borneo orang-utan
matriarch, zoo star and mother of two fine boys, surrounded by a mass of black spiders that crawled
around her like malevolent worshippers. The bananas on which she floated were held together by
the nylon net with which they had been lowered into the ship . When she stepped off the bananas
into the boat, they bobbed up and rolled over. The net became loose. Without thinking about it, only
because it was at hand’ s reach and about to sink, I took hold of the net and pulled it aboard, a casual
gesture that would turn out to be a lifesaver in many ways; this net would become one of my most
precious possessions.
The bananas came apart. The black spiders crawled as fast as they could, but their situation
was hopeless. The island crumbled beneath them. They all drowned. The lifeboat briefly floated in a
sea of fruit.
I had picked up what I thought was a useless net, but did I think of reaping front this banana
manna? No. Not a single one. It was banana split in the wrong sense of the term: the sea dispersed
them. This colossal waste would later weigh on me heavily. I would nearly go into convulsions of
dismay at my stupidity.
Orange Juice was in a fog. Her gestures were slow and tentative and her eyes reflected deep
mental confusion. She was in a state of profound shock. She lay flat on the tarpaulin for several
minutes, quiet and still, before reaching over and falling into the lifeboat proper. I heard a hyena’s
scream.
rising sun was behind her. Her flaming hair looked stunning.
I cried, “Oh blessed Great Mother, Pondicherry fertility goddess, provider of milk and love,
wondrous arm spread of comfort, terror of ticks, picker-up of crying ones, are you to witness this
tragedy too? It’s not right that gentleness meet horror. Better that you had died right away. How
bitterly glad I am to see you. You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with
me, but pain because it won’t be for long. What do you know about the sea? Nothing. What do I
know about the sea? Nothing. Without a driver this bus is lost. Our lives are over. Come aboard if
your destination is oblivion-it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the
window seat, if you want. But it’s a sad view. Oh, enough of this dissembling. Let me say it plainly:
I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Not the spiders, please.”
It was Orange Juice-so called because she tended to drool-our prize Borneo orang-utan
matriarch, zoo star and mother of two fine boys, surrounded by a mass of black spiders that crawled
around her like malevolent worshippers. The bananas on which she floated were held together by
the nylon net with which they had been lowered into the ship . When she stepped off the bananas
into the boat, they bobbed up and rolled over. The net became loose. Without thinking about it, only
because it was at hand’ s reach and about to sink, I took hold of the net and pulled it aboard, a casual
gesture that would turn out to be a lifesaver in many ways; this net would become one of my most
precious possessions.
The bananas came apart. The black spiders crawled as fast as they could, but their situation
was hopeless. The island crumbled beneath them. They all drowned. The lifeboat briefly floated in a
sea of fruit.
I had picked up what I thought was a useless net, but did I think of reaping front this banana
manna? No. Not a single one. It was banana split in the wrong sense of the term: the sea dispersed
them. This colossal waste would later weigh on me heavily. I would nearly go into convulsions of
dismay at my stupidity.
Orange Juice was in a fog. Her gestures were slow and tentative and her eyes reflected deep
mental confusion. She was in a state of profound shock. She lay flat on the tarpaulin for several
minutes, quiet and still, before reaching over and falling into the lifeboat proper. I heard a hyena’s
scream.
Chapter 43
The last trace I saw of the ship was a patch of oil glimmering on the surface of the water.
I was certain I wasn’t alone. It was inconceivable that the Tsimtsum should sink without
eliciting a peep of concern. Right now in Tokyo, in Panama City, in Madras, in Honolulu, why,
even in Winnipeg, red lights were blinking on consoles, alarm bells were ringing, eyes were
opening wide in horror, mouths were gasping, “My God! The Tsimtsum has sunk!” and hands were
reaching for phones. More red lights were starting to blink and more alarm bells were starting to
ring. Pilots were running to their planes with their shoelaces still untied, such was their hurry. Ship
officers were spinning their wheels till they were feeling dizzy. Even submarines were swerving
underwater to join in the rescue effort. We would be rescued soon. A ship would appear on the
horizon. A gun would be found to kill the hyena and put the zebra out of its misery. Perhaps Orange
Juice could be saved. I would climb aboard and be greeted by my family. They would have been
picked up in another lifeboat. I only had to ensure my survival for the next few hours until this
rescue ship came.
I reached from my perch for the net. I rolled it up and tossed it midway on the tarpaulin to act
as a barrier, however small. Orange Juice had seemed practically cataleptic. My guess was she was
dying of shock. It was the hyena that worried me. I could hear it whining. I clung to the hope that a
zebra, a familiar prey, and an orang-utan, an unfamiliar one, would distract it from thoughts of me.
I kept one eye on the horizon, one eye on the other end of the lifeboat. Other than the hyena’s
whining, I heard very little from the animals, no more than claws scuffing against a hard surface
and occasional groans and arrested cries. No major fight seemed to be taking place.
Mid-morning the hyena appeared again. In the preceding minutes its whining had been rising
in volume to a scream. It jumped over the zebra onto the stern, where the lifeboat’ s side benches
came together to form a triangular bench. It was a fairly exposed position, the distance between
bench and gunnel being about twelve inches. The animal nervously peered beyond the boat.
Beholding a vast expanse of shifting water seemed to be the last thing it wanted to see, for it
instantly brought its head down and dropped to the bottom of the boat behind the zebra. That was a
cramped space; between the broad back of the zebra and the sides of the buoyancy tanks that went
all round the boat beneath the benches, there wasn’t much room left for a hyena. It thrashed about
for a moment before climbing to the stern again and jumping back over the zebra to the middle of
the boat, disappearing beneath the tarpaulin. This burst of activity lasted less than ten seconds. The
hyena came to within fifteen feet of me. My only reaction was to freeze with fear. The zebra, by
comparison, swiftly reared its head and barked.
I was hoping the hyena would stay under the tarpaulin. I was disappointed. Nearly
immediately it leapt over the zebra and onto the stern bench again. There it turned on itself a few
times, whimpering and hesitating. I wondered what it was going to do next. The answer came
quickly: it brought its head low and ran around the zebra in a circle, transforming the stern bench,
the side benches and the cross bench just beyond the tarpaulin into a twenty-five-foot indoor track.
It did one lap-two-three-four-five-and onwards, non-stop, till I lost count. And the whole time, lap
after lap, it went yip yip yip yip yip in a high-pitched way. My reaction, once again, was very slow.
I was seized by fear and could only watch. The beast was going at a good clip, and it was no small
animal; it was an adult male that looked to be about 140 pounds. The beating of its legs against the
benches made the whole boat shake, and its claws were loudly clicking on their surface. Each time
it came from the stern I tensed. It was hair-raising enough to see the thing racing my way; worse
still was the fear that it would keep going straight. Clearly, Orange Juice, wherever she was, would
not be an obstacle. And the rolled-up tarpaulin and the bulge of the net were even more pitiful
defences. With the slightest of efforts the hyena could be at the bow right at my feet. It didn’t seem
intent on that course of action; every time it came to the cross bench, it took it, and I saw the upper
half of its body moving rapidly along the edge of the tarpaulin. But in this state, the hyena’s
behaviour was highly unpredictable and it could decide to attack me without warning.
After a number of laps it stopped short at the stern bench and crouched, directing its gaze
downwards, to the space below the tarpaulin. It lifted its eyes and rested them upon me. The look
was nearly the typical look of a hyena-blank and frank, the curiosity apparent with nothing of the
mental set revealed, jaw hanging open, big ears sticking up rigidly, eyes bright and black-were it
not for the strain that exuded from every cell of its body, an anxiety that made the animal glow, as if
with a fever. I prepared for my end. For nothing. It started running in circles again .
When an animal decides to do something, it can do it for a very long time. All morning the
hyena ran in circles going yip yip yip yip yip . Once in a while it briefly stopped at the stern bench,
but otherwise every lap was identical to the previous one, with no variations in movement, in speed,
in the pitch or the volume of the yipping, in the counter-clockwise direction of travel. Its yipping
was shrill and annoying in the extreme. It became so tedious and draining to watch that I eventually
turned my head to the side, trying to keep guard with the corner of my eyes. Even the zebra, which
at first snorted each time the hyena raced by its head, fell into a stupor.
Yet every time the hyena paused at the stern bench, my heart jumped. And as much as I
wanted to direct my attention to the horizon, to where my salvation lay, it kept straying back to this
maniacal beast.
I am not one to hold a prejudice against any animal, but it is a plain fact that the spotted hyena
is not well served by its appearance. It is ugly beyond redemption. Its thick neck and high shoulders
that slope to the hindquarters look as if they’ve come from a discarded prototype for the giraffe, and
its shaggy, coarse coat seems to have been patched together from the leftovers of creation. The
colour is a bungled mix of tan, black, yellow, grey, with the spots having none of the classy
ostentation of a leopard’s rosettes; they look rather like the symptoms of a skin disease, a virulent
form of mange. The head is broad and too massive, with a high forehead, like that of a bear, but
suffering from a receding hairline, and with ears that look ridiculously mouse-like, large and round,
when they haven’t been torn off in battle. The mouth is forever open and panting. The nostrils are
too big. The tail is scraggly and unwagging. The gait is shambling. All the parts put together look
doglike, but like no dog anyone would want as a pet.
But I had not forgotten Father’s words. These were not cowardly carrion-eaters. If National
Geographic portrayed them as such, it was because National Geographic filmed during the day. It
is when the moon rises that the hyena’s day starts, and it proves to be a devastating hunter. Hyenas
attack in packs whatever animal can be run down, its flanks opened while still in full motion. They
go for zebras, gnus and water buffaloes, and not only the old or the infirm in a herd-full-grown
members too. They are hardy attackers, rising up from buttings and kickings immediately, never
giving up for simple lack of will. And they are clever; anything that can be distracted from its
mother is good. The ten-minute-old gnu is a favourite dish, but hyenas also eat young lions and
young rhinoceros. They are diligent when their efforts are rewarded. In fifteen minutes flat, all that
will be left of a zebra is the skull, which may yet be dragged away and gnawed down at leisure by
young ones in the lair. Nothing goes to waste; even grass upon which blood has been spilt will be
eaten. Hyenas’ stomachs swell visibly as they swallow huge chunks of kill. If they are lucky, they
become so full they have difficulty moving. Once they’ve digested their kill, they cough up dense
hairballs, which they pick clean of edibles before rolling in them. Accidental cannibalism is a
common occurrence during the excitement of a feeding; in reaching for a bite of zebra, a hyena will
take in the ear or nostril of a clan member, no hard feelings intended. The hyena feels no disgust at
this mistake. Its delights are too many to admit to disgust at anything.
In fact, a hyena’s catholicity of taste is so indiscriminate it nearly forces admiration. A hyena
will drink from water even as it is urinating in it. The animal has another original use for its urine:
in hot, dry weather it will cool itself by relieving its bladder on the ground and stirring up a
refreshing mud bath with its paws. Hyenas snack on the excrement of herbivores with clucks of
pleasure. It’s an open question as to what hyenas won’t eat. They eat their own kind (the rest of
those whose ears and noses they gobbled down as appetizers) once they’re dead, after a period of
aversion that lasts about one day. They will even attack motor vehicles-the headlights, the exhaust
pipe, the side mirrors. It is not their gastric juices that limit hyenas, but the power of their jaws,
which is formidable.
That was the animal I had racing around in circles before me. An animal to pain the eye and
chill the heart.
Things ended in typical hyena fashion. It stopped at the stern and started producing deep
groans interrupted by fits of heavy panting. I pushed myself away on the oar till only the tips of my
feet were holding on to the boat. The animal hacked and coughed. Abruptly it vomited. A gush
landed behind the zebra. The hyena dropped into what it had just produced. It stayed there, shaking
and whining and turning around on itself, exploring the furthest confines of animal anguish. It did
not move from the restricted space for the rest of the day. At times the zebra made noises about the
predator just behind it, but mostly it lay in hopeless and sullen silence.
I was certain I wasn’t alone. It was inconceivable that the Tsimtsum should sink without
eliciting a peep of concern. Right now in Tokyo, in Panama City, in Madras, in Honolulu, why,
even in Winnipeg, red lights were blinking on consoles, alarm bells were ringing, eyes were
opening wide in horror, mouths were gasping, “My God! The Tsimtsum has sunk!” and hands were
reaching for phones. More red lights were starting to blink and more alarm bells were starting to
ring. Pilots were running to their planes with their shoelaces still untied, such was their hurry. Ship
officers were spinning their wheels till they were feeling dizzy. Even submarines were swerving
underwater to join in the rescue effort. We would be rescued soon. A ship would appear on the
horizon. A gun would be found to kill the hyena and put the zebra out of its misery. Perhaps Orange
Juice could be saved. I would climb aboard and be greeted by my family. They would have been
picked up in another lifeboat. I only had to ensure my survival for the next few hours until this
rescue ship came.
I reached from my perch for the net. I rolled it up and tossed it midway on the tarpaulin to act
as a barrier, however small. Orange Juice had seemed practically cataleptic. My guess was she was
dying of shock. It was the hyena that worried me. I could hear it whining. I clung to the hope that a
zebra, a familiar prey, and an orang-utan, an unfamiliar one, would distract it from thoughts of me.
I kept one eye on the horizon, one eye on the other end of the lifeboat. Other than the hyena’s
whining, I heard very little from the animals, no more than claws scuffing against a hard surface
and occasional groans and arrested cries. No major fight seemed to be taking place.
Mid-morning the hyena appeared again. In the preceding minutes its whining had been rising
in volume to a scream. It jumped over the zebra onto the stern, where the lifeboat’ s side benches
came together to form a triangular bench. It was a fairly exposed position, the distance between
bench and gunnel being about twelve inches. The animal nervously peered beyond the boat.
Beholding a vast expanse of shifting water seemed to be the last thing it wanted to see, for it
instantly brought its head down and dropped to the bottom of the boat behind the zebra. That was a
cramped space; between the broad back of the zebra and the sides of the buoyancy tanks that went
all round the boat beneath the benches, there wasn’t much room left for a hyena. It thrashed about
for a moment before climbing to the stern again and jumping back over the zebra to the middle of
the boat, disappearing beneath the tarpaulin. This burst of activity lasted less than ten seconds. The
hyena came to within fifteen feet of me. My only reaction was to freeze with fear. The zebra, by
comparison, swiftly reared its head and barked.
I was hoping the hyena would stay under the tarpaulin. I was disappointed. Nearly
immediately it leapt over the zebra and onto the stern bench again. There it turned on itself a few
times, whimpering and hesitating. I wondered what it was going to do next. The answer came
quickly: it brought its head low and ran around the zebra in a circle, transforming the stern bench,
the side benches and the cross bench just beyond the tarpaulin into a twenty-five-foot indoor track.
It did one lap-two-three-four-five-and onwards, non-stop, till I lost count. And the whole time, lap
after lap, it went yip yip yip yip yip in a high-pitched way. My reaction, once again, was very slow.
I was seized by fear and could only watch. The beast was going at a good clip, and it was no small
animal; it was an adult male that looked to be about 140 pounds. The beating of its legs against the
benches made the whole boat shake, and its claws were loudly clicking on their surface. Each time
it came from the stern I tensed. It was hair-raising enough to see the thing racing my way; worse
still was the fear that it would keep going straight. Clearly, Orange Juice, wherever she was, would
not be an obstacle. And the rolled-up tarpaulin and the bulge of the net were even more pitiful
defences. With the slightest of efforts the hyena could be at the bow right at my feet. It didn’t seem
intent on that course of action; every time it came to the cross bench, it took it, and I saw the upper
half of its body moving rapidly along the edge of the tarpaulin. But in this state, the hyena’s
behaviour was highly unpredictable and it could decide to attack me without warning.
After a number of laps it stopped short at the stern bench and crouched, directing its gaze
downwards, to the space below the tarpaulin. It lifted its eyes and rested them upon me. The look
was nearly the typical look of a hyena-blank and frank, the curiosity apparent with nothing of the
mental set revealed, jaw hanging open, big ears sticking up rigidly, eyes bright and black-were it
not for the strain that exuded from every cell of its body, an anxiety that made the animal glow, as if
with a fever. I prepared for my end. For nothing. It started running in circles again .
When an animal decides to do something, it can do it for a very long time. All morning the
hyena ran in circles going yip yip yip yip yip . Once in a while it briefly stopped at the stern bench,
but otherwise every lap was identical to the previous one, with no variations in movement, in speed,
in the pitch or the volume of the yipping, in the counter-clockwise direction of travel. Its yipping
was shrill and annoying in the extreme. It became so tedious and draining to watch that I eventually
turned my head to the side, trying to keep guard with the corner of my eyes. Even the zebra, which
at first snorted each time the hyena raced by its head, fell into a stupor.
Yet every time the hyena paused at the stern bench, my heart jumped. And as much as I
wanted to direct my attention to the horizon, to where my salvation lay, it kept straying back to this
maniacal beast.
I am not one to hold a prejudice against any animal, but it is a plain fact that the spotted hyena
is not well served by its appearance. It is ugly beyond redemption. Its thick neck and high shoulders
that slope to the hindquarters look as if they’ve come from a discarded prototype for the giraffe, and
its shaggy, coarse coat seems to have been patched together from the leftovers of creation. The
colour is a bungled mix of tan, black, yellow, grey, with the spots having none of the classy
ostentation of a leopard’s rosettes; they look rather like the symptoms of a skin disease, a virulent
form of mange. The head is broad and too massive, with a high forehead, like that of a bear, but
suffering from a receding hairline, and with ears that look ridiculously mouse-like, large and round,
when they haven’t been torn off in battle. The mouth is forever open and panting. The nostrils are
too big. The tail is scraggly and unwagging. The gait is shambling. All the parts put together look
doglike, but like no dog anyone would want as a pet.
But I had not forgotten Father’s words. These were not cowardly carrion-eaters. If National
Geographic portrayed them as such, it was because National Geographic filmed during the day. It
is when the moon rises that the hyena’s day starts, and it proves to be a devastating hunter. Hyenas
attack in packs whatever animal can be run down, its flanks opened while still in full motion. They
go for zebras, gnus and water buffaloes, and not only the old or the infirm in a herd-full-grown
members too. They are hardy attackers, rising up from buttings and kickings immediately, never
giving up for simple lack of will. And they are clever; anything that can be distracted from its
mother is good. The ten-minute-old gnu is a favourite dish, but hyenas also eat young lions and
young rhinoceros. They are diligent when their efforts are rewarded. In fifteen minutes flat, all that
will be left of a zebra is the skull, which may yet be dragged away and gnawed down at leisure by
young ones in the lair. Nothing goes to waste; even grass upon which blood has been spilt will be
eaten. Hyenas’ stomachs swell visibly as they swallow huge chunks of kill. If they are lucky, they
become so full they have difficulty moving. Once they’ve digested their kill, they cough up dense
hairballs, which they pick clean of edibles before rolling in them. Accidental cannibalism is a
common occurrence during the excitement of a feeding; in reaching for a bite of zebra, a hyena will
take in the ear or nostril of a clan member, no hard feelings intended. The hyena feels no disgust at
this mistake. Its delights are too many to admit to disgust at anything.
In fact, a hyena’s catholicity of taste is so indiscriminate it nearly forces admiration. A hyena
will drink from water even as it is urinating in it. The animal has another original use for its urine:
in hot, dry weather it will cool itself by relieving its bladder on the ground and stirring up a
refreshing mud bath with its paws. Hyenas snack on the excrement of herbivores with clucks of
pleasure. It’s an open question as to what hyenas won’t eat. They eat their own kind (the rest of
those whose ears and noses they gobbled down as appetizers) once they’re dead, after a period of
aversion that lasts about one day. They will even attack motor vehicles-the headlights, the exhaust
pipe, the side mirrors. It is not their gastric juices that limit hyenas, but the power of their jaws,
which is formidable.
That was the animal I had racing around in circles before me. An animal to pain the eye and
chill the heart.
Things ended in typical hyena fashion. It stopped at the stern and started producing deep
groans interrupted by fits of heavy panting. I pushed myself away on the oar till only the tips of my
feet were holding on to the boat. The animal hacked and coughed. Abruptly it vomited. A gush
landed behind the zebra. The hyena dropped into what it had just produced. It stayed there, shaking
and whining and turning around on itself, exploring the furthest confines of animal anguish. It did
not move from the restricted space for the rest of the day. At times the zebra made noises about the
predator just behind it, but mostly it lay in hopeless and sullen silence.
Chapter 44
The sun climbed through the sky, reached its zenith, began to come down. I spent the entire
day perched on the oar, moving only as much as was necessary to stay balanced. My whole being
tended towards the spot on the horizon that would appear and save me. It was a state of tense,
breathless boredom. Those first hours are associated in my memory with one sound, not one you’d
guess, not the yipping of the hyena or the hissing of the sea: it was the buzzing of flies. There were
flies aboard the lifeboat. They emerged and flew about in the way of flies, in great, lazy orbits
except when they came close to each other, when they spiralled together with dizzying speed and a
burst of buzzing. Some were brave enough to venture out to where I was. They looped around me,
sounding like sputtering, single-prop airplanes, before hurrying home. Whether they were native to
the boat or had come with one of the animals, the hyena most likely, I can’t say. But whatever their
origin, they didn’t last long; they all disappeared within two days. The hyena, from behind the
zebra, snapped at them and ate a number. Others were probably swept out to sea by the wind.
Perhaps a few lucky ones came to their life’s term and died of old age.
As evening approached, my anxiety grew. Everything about the end of the day scared me. At
night a ship would have difficulty seeing me. At night the hyena might become active again and
maybe Orange Juice too .
Darkness came. There was no moon. Clouds hid the stars. The contours of things became hard
to distinguish. Everything disappeared, the sea, the lifeboat, my own body. The sea was quiet and
there was hardly any wind, so I couldn’t even ground myself in sound. I seemed to be floating in
pure, abstract blackness. I kept my eyes fixed on where I thought the horizon was, while my ears
were on guard for any sign of the animals. I couldn’t imagine lasting the night.
Sometime during the night the hyena began snarling and the zebra barking and squealing, and
I heard a repeated knocking sound. I shook with fright and-I will hide nothing here -relieved myself
in my pants. But these sounds came from the other end of the lifeboat. I couldn’t feel any shaking
that indicated movement. The hellish beast was apparently staying away from me. From nearer in
the blackness I began hearing loud expirations and groans and grunts and various wet mouth
sounds. The idea of Orange Juice stirring was too much for my nerves to bear, so I did not consider
it. I simply ignored the thought. There were also noises coming from beneath me, from the water,
sudden flapping sounds and swishing sounds that were over and done with in an instant. The battle
for life was taking place there too.
The night passed, minute by slow minute.
day perched on the oar, moving only as much as was necessary to stay balanced. My whole being
tended towards the spot on the horizon that would appear and save me. It was a state of tense,
breathless boredom. Those first hours are associated in my memory with one sound, not one you’d
guess, not the yipping of the hyena or the hissing of the sea: it was the buzzing of flies. There were
flies aboard the lifeboat. They emerged and flew about in the way of flies, in great, lazy orbits
except when they came close to each other, when they spiralled together with dizzying speed and a
burst of buzzing. Some were brave enough to venture out to where I was. They looped around me,
sounding like sputtering, single-prop airplanes, before hurrying home. Whether they were native to
the boat or had come with one of the animals, the hyena most likely, I can’t say. But whatever their
origin, they didn’t last long; they all disappeared within two days. The hyena, from behind the
zebra, snapped at them and ate a number. Others were probably swept out to sea by the wind.
Perhaps a few lucky ones came to their life’s term and died of old age.
As evening approached, my anxiety grew. Everything about the end of the day scared me. At
night a ship would have difficulty seeing me. At night the hyena might become active again and
maybe Orange Juice too .
Darkness came. There was no moon. Clouds hid the stars. The contours of things became hard
to distinguish. Everything disappeared, the sea, the lifeboat, my own body. The sea was quiet and
there was hardly any wind, so I couldn’t even ground myself in sound. I seemed to be floating in
pure, abstract blackness. I kept my eyes fixed on where I thought the horizon was, while my ears
were on guard for any sign of the animals. I couldn’t imagine lasting the night.
Sometime during the night the hyena began snarling and the zebra barking and squealing, and
I heard a repeated knocking sound. I shook with fright and-I will hide nothing here -relieved myself
in my pants. But these sounds came from the other end of the lifeboat. I couldn’t feel any shaking
that indicated movement. The hellish beast was apparently staying away from me. From nearer in
the blackness I began hearing loud expirations and groans and grunts and various wet mouth
sounds. The idea of Orange Juice stirring was too much for my nerves to bear, so I did not consider
it. I simply ignored the thought. There were also noises coming from beneath me, from the water,
sudden flapping sounds and swishing sounds that were over and done with in an instant. The battle
for life was taking place there too.
The night passed, minute by slow minute.
Chapter 45
I was cold. It was a distracted observation, as if it didn’t concern me. Daybreak came. It
happened quickly, yet by imperceptible degrees. A corner of the sky changed colours. The air began
filling with light. The calm sea opened up around me like a great book. Still it felt like night.
Suddenly it was day.
Warmth came only when the sun, looking like an electrically lit orange, broke across the
horizon, but I didn’t need to wait that long to feel it. With the very first rays of light it came alive in
me: hope. As things emerged in outline and filled with colour, hope increased until it was like a
song in my heart. Oh, what it was to bask in it! Things would work out yet. The worst was over. I
had survived the night. Today I would be rescued. To think that, to string those words together in
my mind, was itself a source of hope. Hope fed on hope. As the horizon became a neat, sharp line, I
scanned it eagerly. The day was clear again and visibility was perfect. I imagined Ravi would greet
me first and with a tease. “What’s this?” he would say. “You find yourself a great big lifeboat and
you fill it with animals? You think you’re Noah or something?” Father would be unshaven and
dishevelled. Mother would look to the sky and take me in her arms. I went through a dozen versions
of what it was going to be like on the rescue ship, variations on the theme of sweet reunion. That
morning the horizon might curve one way, my lips resolutely curved the other, in a smile.
Strange as it might sound, it was only after a long time that I looked to see what was
happening in the lifeboat. The hyena had attacked the zebra. Its mouth was bright red and it was
chewing on a piece of hide. My eyes automatically searched for the wound, for the area under
attack. I gasped with horror.
The zebra’s broken leg was missing. The hyena had bitten it off and dragged it to the stern,
behind the zebra. A flap of skin hung limply over the raw stump. Blood was still dripping. The
victim bore its suffering patiently, without showy remonstrations. A slow and constant grinding of
its teeth was the only visible sign of distress. Shock, revulsion and anger surged through me. I felt
intense hatred for the hyena. I thought of doing something to kill it. But I did nothing. And my
outrage was short-lived. I must be honest about that. I didn’t have pity to spare for long for the
zebra. When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish
hunger for survival. It was sad that it was suffering so much-and being such a big, strapping
creature it wasn’t at the end of its ordeal- but there was nothing I could do about it. I felt pity and
then I moved on. This is not something I am proud of. I am sorry I was so callous about the matter.
I have not forgotten that poor zebra and what it went through. Not a prayer goes by that I don’t
think of it.
There was still no sign of Orange Juice. I turned my eyes to the horizon again.
That afternoon the wind picked up a little and I noticed something about the lifeboat: despite
its weight, it floated lightly on the water, no doubt because it was carrying less than its capacity. We
had plenty of freeboard, the distance between the water and the gunnel; it would take a mean sea to
swamp us. But it also meant that whatever end of the boat was facing the wind tended to fall away,
bringing us broadside to the waves. With small waves the result was a ceaseless, fist-like beating
against the hull, while larger waves made for a tiresome rolling of the boat as it leaned from side to
side. This jerky and incessant motion was making me feel queasy.
Perhaps I would feel better in a new position. I slid down the oar and shifted back onto the
bow. I sat facing the waves, with the rest of the boat to my left. I was closer to the hyena, but it
wasn’t stirring.
It was as I was breathing deeply and concentrating on making my nausea go away that I saw
Orange Juice. I had imagined her completely out of sight, near the bow beneath the tarpaulin, as far
from the hyena as she could get. Not so. She was on the side bench, just beyond the edge of the
hyena’s indoor track and barely hidden from me by the bulge of rolled-up tarpaulin . She lifted her
head only an inch or so and right away I saw her.
Curiosity got the best of me. I had to see her better. Despite the rolling of the boat I brought
myself to a kneeling position. The hyena looked at me, but did not move. Orange Juice came into
sight. She was deeply slouched and holding on to the gunnel with both her hands, her head sunk
very low between her arms. Her mouth was open and her tongue was lolling about. She was visibly
panting. Despite the tragedy afflicting me, despite not feeling well, I let out a laugh. Everything
about Orange Juice at that moment spelled one word: seasickness . The image of a new species
popped into my head: the rare seafaring green orang-utan. I returned to my sitting position. The
poor dear looked so humanly sick! It is a particularly funny thing to read human traits in animals,
especially in apes and monkeys, where it is so easy. Simians are the clearest mirrors we have in the
animal world. That is why they are so popular in zoos. I laughed again. I brought my hands to my
chest, surprised at how I felt. Oh my. This laughter was like a volcano of happiness erupting in me.
And Orange Juice had not only cheered me up; she had also taken on both our feelings of
seasickness. I was feeling fine now.
I returned to scrutinizing the horizon, my hopes high.
Besides being deathly seasick, there was something else about Orange Juice that was
remarkable: she was uninjured. And she had her back turned to the hyena, as if she felt she could
safely ignore it. The ecosystem on this lifeboat was decidedly baffling. Since there are no natural
conditions in which a spotted hyena and an orangutan can meet, there being none of the first in
Borneo and none of the second in Africa, there is no way of knowing how they would relate. But it
seemed to me highly improbable, if not totally incredible, that when brought together these
frugivorous tree-dwellers and carnivorous savannah-dwellers would so radically carve out their
niches as to pay no attention to each other. Surely an orang-utan would smell of prey to a hyena,
albeit a strange one, one to be remembered afterwards for producing stupendous hairballs,
nonetheless better-tasting than an exhaust pipe and well worth looking out for when near trees. And
surely a hyena would smell of a predator to an orangutan, a reason for being vigilant when a piece
of durian has been dropped to the ground accidentally. But nature forever holds surprises. Perhaps it
was not so. If goats could be brought to live amicably with rhinoceros, why not orang-utans with
hyenas? That would be a big winner at a zoo. A sign would have to be put up. I could see it already:
“Dear Public, Do not be afraid for the orang-utans! They are in the trees because that is where they
live, not because they are afraid of the spotted hyenas. Come back at mealtime, or at sunset when
they get thirsty, and you will see them climbing down from their trees and moving about the
grounds, absolutely unmolested by the hyenas.” Father would be fascinated.
Sometime that afternoon I saw the first specimen of what would become a dear, reliable
friend of mine. There was a bumping and scraping sound against the hull of the lifeboat. A few
seconds later, so close to the boat I could have leaned down and grabbed it, a large sea turtle
appeared, a hawksbill, flippers lazily turning, head sticking out of the water. It was striking-looking
in an ugly sort of way, with a rugged, yellowish brown shell about three feet long and spotted with
patches of algae, and a dark green face with a sharp beak, no lips, two solid holes for nostrils, and
black eyes that stared at me intently. The expression was haughty and severe, like that of an
ill-tempered old man who has complaining on his mind. The queerest thing about the reptile was
simply that it was. It looked incongruous, floating there in the water, so odd in its shape compared
to the sleek, slippery design of fish. Yet it was plainly in its element and it was I who was the odd
one out. It hovered by the boat for several minutes.
I said to it, “Go tell a ship I’m here. Go, go.” It turned and sank out of sight, back flippers
pushing water in alternate strokes.
happened quickly, yet by imperceptible degrees. A corner of the sky changed colours. The air began
filling with light. The calm sea opened up around me like a great book. Still it felt like night.
Suddenly it was day.
Warmth came only when the sun, looking like an electrically lit orange, broke across the
horizon, but I didn’t need to wait that long to feel it. With the very first rays of light it came alive in
me: hope. As things emerged in outline and filled with colour, hope increased until it was like a
song in my heart. Oh, what it was to bask in it! Things would work out yet. The worst was over. I
had survived the night. Today I would be rescued. To think that, to string those words together in
my mind, was itself a source of hope. Hope fed on hope. As the horizon became a neat, sharp line, I
scanned it eagerly. The day was clear again and visibility was perfect. I imagined Ravi would greet
me first and with a tease. “What’s this?” he would say. “You find yourself a great big lifeboat and
you fill it with animals? You think you’re Noah or something?” Father would be unshaven and
dishevelled. Mother would look to the sky and take me in her arms. I went through a dozen versions
of what it was going to be like on the rescue ship, variations on the theme of sweet reunion. That
morning the horizon might curve one way, my lips resolutely curved the other, in a smile.
Strange as it might sound, it was only after a long time that I looked to see what was
happening in the lifeboat. The hyena had attacked the zebra. Its mouth was bright red and it was
chewing on a piece of hide. My eyes automatically searched for the wound, for the area under
attack. I gasped with horror.
The zebra’s broken leg was missing. The hyena had bitten it off and dragged it to the stern,
behind the zebra. A flap of skin hung limply over the raw stump. Blood was still dripping. The
victim bore its suffering patiently, without showy remonstrations. A slow and constant grinding of
its teeth was the only visible sign of distress. Shock, revulsion and anger surged through me. I felt
intense hatred for the hyena. I thought of doing something to kill it. But I did nothing. And my
outrage was short-lived. I must be honest about that. I didn’t have pity to spare for long for the
zebra. When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish
hunger for survival. It was sad that it was suffering so much-and being such a big, strapping
creature it wasn’t at the end of its ordeal- but there was nothing I could do about it. I felt pity and
then I moved on. This is not something I am proud of. I am sorry I was so callous about the matter.
I have not forgotten that poor zebra and what it went through. Not a prayer goes by that I don’t
think of it.
There was still no sign of Orange Juice. I turned my eyes to the horizon again.
That afternoon the wind picked up a little and I noticed something about the lifeboat: despite
its weight, it floated lightly on the water, no doubt because it was carrying less than its capacity. We
had plenty of freeboard, the distance between the water and the gunnel; it would take a mean sea to
swamp us. But it also meant that whatever end of the boat was facing the wind tended to fall away,
bringing us broadside to the waves. With small waves the result was a ceaseless, fist-like beating
against the hull, while larger waves made for a tiresome rolling of the boat as it leaned from side to
side. This jerky and incessant motion was making me feel queasy.
Perhaps I would feel better in a new position. I slid down the oar and shifted back onto the
bow. I sat facing the waves, with the rest of the boat to my left. I was closer to the hyena, but it
wasn’t stirring.
It was as I was breathing deeply and concentrating on making my nausea go away that I saw
Orange Juice. I had imagined her completely out of sight, near the bow beneath the tarpaulin, as far
from the hyena as she could get. Not so. She was on the side bench, just beyond the edge of the
hyena’s indoor track and barely hidden from me by the bulge of rolled-up tarpaulin . She lifted her
head only an inch or so and right away I saw her.
Curiosity got the best of me. I had to see her better. Despite the rolling of the boat I brought
myself to a kneeling position. The hyena looked at me, but did not move. Orange Juice came into
sight. She was deeply slouched and holding on to the gunnel with both her hands, her head sunk
very low between her arms. Her mouth was open and her tongue was lolling about. She was visibly
panting. Despite the tragedy afflicting me, despite not feeling well, I let out a laugh. Everything
about Orange Juice at that moment spelled one word: seasickness . The image of a new species
popped into my head: the rare seafaring green orang-utan. I returned to my sitting position. The
poor dear looked so humanly sick! It is a particularly funny thing to read human traits in animals,
especially in apes and monkeys, where it is so easy. Simians are the clearest mirrors we have in the
animal world. That is why they are so popular in zoos. I laughed again. I brought my hands to my
chest, surprised at how I felt. Oh my. This laughter was like a volcano of happiness erupting in me.
And Orange Juice had not only cheered me up; she had also taken on both our feelings of
seasickness. I was feeling fine now.
I returned to scrutinizing the horizon, my hopes high.
Besides being deathly seasick, there was something else about Orange Juice that was
remarkable: she was uninjured. And she had her back turned to the hyena, as if she felt she could
safely ignore it. The ecosystem on this lifeboat was decidedly baffling. Since there are no natural
conditions in which a spotted hyena and an orangutan can meet, there being none of the first in
Borneo and none of the second in Africa, there is no way of knowing how they would relate. But it
seemed to me highly improbable, if not totally incredible, that when brought together these
frugivorous tree-dwellers and carnivorous savannah-dwellers would so radically carve out their
niches as to pay no attention to each other. Surely an orang-utan would smell of prey to a hyena,
albeit a strange one, one to be remembered afterwards for producing stupendous hairballs,
nonetheless better-tasting than an exhaust pipe and well worth looking out for when near trees. And
surely a hyena would smell of a predator to an orangutan, a reason for being vigilant when a piece
of durian has been dropped to the ground accidentally. But nature forever holds surprises. Perhaps it
was not so. If goats could be brought to live amicably with rhinoceros, why not orang-utans with
hyenas? That would be a big winner at a zoo. A sign would have to be put up. I could see it already:
“Dear Public, Do not be afraid for the orang-utans! They are in the trees because that is where they
live, not because they are afraid of the spotted hyenas. Come back at mealtime, or at sunset when
they get thirsty, and you will see them climbing down from their trees and moving about the
grounds, absolutely unmolested by the hyenas.” Father would be fascinated.
Sometime that afternoon I saw the first specimen of what would become a dear, reliable
friend of mine. There was a bumping and scraping sound against the hull of the lifeboat. A few
seconds later, so close to the boat I could have leaned down and grabbed it, a large sea turtle
appeared, a hawksbill, flippers lazily turning, head sticking out of the water. It was striking-looking
in an ugly sort of way, with a rugged, yellowish brown shell about three feet long and spotted with
patches of algae, and a dark green face with a sharp beak, no lips, two solid holes for nostrils, and
black eyes that stared at me intently. The expression was haughty and severe, like that of an
ill-tempered old man who has complaining on his mind. The queerest thing about the reptile was
simply that it was. It looked incongruous, floating there in the water, so odd in its shape compared
to the sleek, slippery design of fish. Yet it was plainly in its element and it was I who was the odd
one out. It hovered by the boat for several minutes.
I said to it, “Go tell a ship I’m here. Go, go.” It turned and sank out of sight, back flippers
pushing water in alternate strokes.
Chapter 46
Clouds that gathered where ships were supposed to appear, and the passing of the day, slowly
did the job of unbending my smile. It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my
life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion. Still, that second
night at sea stands in my memory as one of exceptional suffering, different from the frozen anxiety
of the first night in being a more conventional sort of suffering, the broken-down kind consisting of
weeping and sadness and spiritual pain, and different from later ones in that I still had the strength
to appreciate fully what I felt. And that dreadful night was preceded by a dreadful evening.
I noticed the presence of sharks around the lifeboat. The sun was beginning to pull the
curtains on the day. It was a placid explosion of orange and red, a great chromatic symphony, a
colour canvas of supernatural proportions, truly a splendid Pacific sunset, quite wasted on me. The
sharks were makos-swift, pointy- snouted predators with long, murderous teeth that protruded
noticeably from their mouths. They were about six or seven feet long, one was larger still. I watched
them anxiously. The largest one came at the boat quickly, as if to attack, its dorsal fin rising out of
the water by several inches, but it dipped below just before reaching us and glided underfoot with
fearsome grace. It returned, not coming so close this time, then disappeared. The other sharks paid a
longer visit, coming and going at different depths, some in plain sight at hand’s reach below the
surface of the water, others deeper down. There were other fish too, big and small, colourful,
differently shaped. I might have considered them more closely had my attention not been drawn
elsewhere: Orange Juice’s head came into sight.
She turned and brought her arm onto the tarpaulin in a motion that imitated exactly the way
you or I would bring out an arm and place it on the back of the chair next to our own in a gesture of
expansive relaxation. But such was clearly not her disposition. Bearing an expression profoundly
sad and mournful, she began to look about, slowly turning her head from side to side. Instantly the
likeness of apes lost its amusing character. She had given birth at the zoo to two young ones,
strapping males five and eight years old that were her-and our-pride. It was unmistakably these she
had on her mind as she searched over the water, unintentionally mimicking what I had been doing
these last thirty-six hours. She noticed me and expressed nothing about it. I was just another animal
that had lost everything and was vowed to death. My mood plummeted.
Then, with only a snarl for notice, the hyena went amok. It hadn’t moved from its cramped
quarters all day. It put its front legs on the zebra’s side, reached over and gathered a fold of skin in
its jaws. It pulled roughly. A strip of hide came off the zebra’s belly like gift-wrap paper comes off
a gift, in a smooth-edged swath, only silently, in the way of tearing skin, and with greater resistance.
Immediately blood poured forth like a river. Barking, snorting and squealing, the zebra came to life
to defend itself. It pushed on its front legs and reared its head in an attempt to bite the hyena, but the
beast was out of reach. It shook its good hind leg, which did no more than explain the origin of the
previous night’s knocking: it was the hoof beating against the side of the boat. The zebras attempts
at self-preservation only whipped the hyena into a frenzy of snarling and biting. It made a gaping
wound in the zebra’s side. When it was no longer satisfied with the reach it had from behind the
zebra, the hyena climbed onto its haunches. It started pulling out coils of intestines and other
viscera.
There was no order to what it was doing. It bit here, swallowed there, seemingly
overwhelmed by the riches before it. After devouring half the liver, it started tugging on the whitish,
balloon-like stomach bag. But it was heavy, and with the zebra’s haunches being higher than its
belly-and blood being slippery-the hyena started to slide into its victim. It plunged head and
shoulders into the zebra’s guts, up to the knees of its front legs. It pushed itself out, only to slide
back down. It finally settled in this position, half in, half out. The zebra was being eaten alive from
the inside .
It protested with diminishing vigour. Blood started coming out its nostrils. Once or twice it
reared its head straight up, as if appealing to heaven-the abomination of the moment was perfectly
expressed.
Orange Juice did not view these doings indifferently. She raised herself to her full height on
her bench. With her incongruously small legs and massive torso, she looked like a refrigerator on
crooked wheels. But with her giant arms lifted in the air, she looked impressive. Their span was
greater than her height-one hand hung over the water, the other reached across the width of the
lifeboat nearly to the opposite side. She pulled back her lips, showing off enormous canines, and
began to roar . It was a deep, powerful, huffing roar, amazing for an animal normally as silent as a
giraffe. The hyena was as startled as I was by the outburst. It cringed and retreated. But not for long.
After an intense stare at Orange Juice, the hairs on its neck and shoulders stood up and its tail rose
straight in the air. It climbed back onto the dying zebra. There, blood dripping from its mouth, it
responded to Orange Juice in kind, with a higher-pitched roar. The two animals were three feet
apart, wide-open jaws directly facing. They put all their energies into their cries, their bodies
shaking with the effort. I could see deep down the hyena’s throat. The Pacific air, which until a
minute before had been carrying the whistling and whispering of the sea, a natural melody I would
have called soothing had the circumstances been happier, was all at once filled with this appalling
noise, like the fury of an all-out battle, with the ear-splitting firing of guns and cannons and the
thunderous blasts of bombs. The hyena’s roar filled the higher range of what my ears could hear,
Orange Juice’s bass roar filled the lower range, and somewhere in between I could hear the cries of
the helpless zebra. My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and
be registered.
I began to tremble uncontrollably. I was convinced the hyena was going to lunge at Orange
Juice.
I could not imagine that matters could get worse, but they did. The zebra snorted some of its
blood overboard. Seconds later there was a hard knock against the boat, followed by another. The
water began to churn around us with sharks. They were searching for the source of the blood, for
the food so close at hand. Their tail fins flashed out of the water, their heads swung out. The boat
was hit repeatedly. I was not afraid we would capsize-I thought the sharks would actually punch
through the metal hull and sink us.
With every bang the animals jumped and looked alarmed, but they were not to be distracted
from their main business of roaring in each others faces. I was certain the shouting match would
turn physical. Instead it broke off abruptly after a few minutes. Orange Juice, with huffs and
lip-smacking noises, turned away, and the hyena lowered its head and retreated behind the zebra’s
butchered body. The sharks, finding nothing, stopped knocking on the boat and eventually left.
Silence fell at last.
A foul and pungent smell, an earthy mix of rust and excrement, hung in the air. There was
blood everywhere, coagulating to a deep red crust. A single fly buzzed about, sounding to me like
an alarm bell of insanity. No ship, nothing at all, had appeared on the horizon that day, and now the
day was ending. When the sun slipped below the horizon, it was not only the day that died and the
poor zebra, but my family as well. With that second sunset, disbelief gave way to pain and grief.
They were dead; I could no longer deny it. What a thing to acknowledge in your heart! To lose a
brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is
supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your
life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you
seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like
losing the sun above you. It is like losing-I’m sorry, I would rather not go on. I lay down on the
tarpaulin and spent the whole night weeping and grieving, my face buried in my arms. The hyena
spent a good part of the night eating.
did the job of unbending my smile. It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my
life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion. Still, that second
night at sea stands in my memory as one of exceptional suffering, different from the frozen anxiety
of the first night in being a more conventional sort of suffering, the broken-down kind consisting of
weeping and sadness and spiritual pain, and different from later ones in that I still had the strength
to appreciate fully what I felt. And that dreadful night was preceded by a dreadful evening.
I noticed the presence of sharks around the lifeboat. The sun was beginning to pull the
curtains on the day. It was a placid explosion of orange and red, a great chromatic symphony, a
colour canvas of supernatural proportions, truly a splendid Pacific sunset, quite wasted on me. The
sharks were makos-swift, pointy- snouted predators with long, murderous teeth that protruded
noticeably from their mouths. They were about six or seven feet long, one was larger still. I watched
them anxiously. The largest one came at the boat quickly, as if to attack, its dorsal fin rising out of
the water by several inches, but it dipped below just before reaching us and glided underfoot with
fearsome grace. It returned, not coming so close this time, then disappeared. The other sharks paid a
longer visit, coming and going at different depths, some in plain sight at hand’s reach below the
surface of the water, others deeper down. There were other fish too, big and small, colourful,
differently shaped. I might have considered them more closely had my attention not been drawn
elsewhere: Orange Juice’s head came into sight.
She turned and brought her arm onto the tarpaulin in a motion that imitated exactly the way
you or I would bring out an arm and place it on the back of the chair next to our own in a gesture of
expansive relaxation. But such was clearly not her disposition. Bearing an expression profoundly
sad and mournful, she began to look about, slowly turning her head from side to side. Instantly the
likeness of apes lost its amusing character. She had given birth at the zoo to two young ones,
strapping males five and eight years old that were her-and our-pride. It was unmistakably these she
had on her mind as she searched over the water, unintentionally mimicking what I had been doing
these last thirty-six hours. She noticed me and expressed nothing about it. I was just another animal
that had lost everything and was vowed to death. My mood plummeted.
Then, with only a snarl for notice, the hyena went amok. It hadn’t moved from its cramped
quarters all day. It put its front legs on the zebra’s side, reached over and gathered a fold of skin in
its jaws. It pulled roughly. A strip of hide came off the zebra’s belly like gift-wrap paper comes off
a gift, in a smooth-edged swath, only silently, in the way of tearing skin, and with greater resistance.
Immediately blood poured forth like a river. Barking, snorting and squealing, the zebra came to life
to defend itself. It pushed on its front legs and reared its head in an attempt to bite the hyena, but the
beast was out of reach. It shook its good hind leg, which did no more than explain the origin of the
previous night’s knocking: it was the hoof beating against the side of the boat. The zebras attempts
at self-preservation only whipped the hyena into a frenzy of snarling and biting. It made a gaping
wound in the zebra’s side. When it was no longer satisfied with the reach it had from behind the
zebra, the hyena climbed onto its haunches. It started pulling out coils of intestines and other
viscera.
There was no order to what it was doing. It bit here, swallowed there, seemingly
overwhelmed by the riches before it. After devouring half the liver, it started tugging on the whitish,
balloon-like stomach bag. But it was heavy, and with the zebra’s haunches being higher than its
belly-and blood being slippery-the hyena started to slide into its victim. It plunged head and
shoulders into the zebra’s guts, up to the knees of its front legs. It pushed itself out, only to slide
back down. It finally settled in this position, half in, half out. The zebra was being eaten alive from
the inside .
It protested with diminishing vigour. Blood started coming out its nostrils. Once or twice it
reared its head straight up, as if appealing to heaven-the abomination of the moment was perfectly
expressed.
Orange Juice did not view these doings indifferently. She raised herself to her full height on
her bench. With her incongruously small legs and massive torso, she looked like a refrigerator on
crooked wheels. But with her giant arms lifted in the air, she looked impressive. Their span was
greater than her height-one hand hung over the water, the other reached across the width of the
lifeboat nearly to the opposite side. She pulled back her lips, showing off enormous canines, and
began to roar . It was a deep, powerful, huffing roar, amazing for an animal normally as silent as a
giraffe. The hyena was as startled as I was by the outburst. It cringed and retreated. But not for long.
After an intense stare at Orange Juice, the hairs on its neck and shoulders stood up and its tail rose
straight in the air. It climbed back onto the dying zebra. There, blood dripping from its mouth, it
responded to Orange Juice in kind, with a higher-pitched roar. The two animals were three feet
apart, wide-open jaws directly facing. They put all their energies into their cries, their bodies
shaking with the effort. I could see deep down the hyena’s throat. The Pacific air, which until a
minute before had been carrying the whistling and whispering of the sea, a natural melody I would
have called soothing had the circumstances been happier, was all at once filled with this appalling
noise, like the fury of an all-out battle, with the ear-splitting firing of guns and cannons and the
thunderous blasts of bombs. The hyena’s roar filled the higher range of what my ears could hear,
Orange Juice’s bass roar filled the lower range, and somewhere in between I could hear the cries of
the helpless zebra. My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and
be registered.
I began to tremble uncontrollably. I was convinced the hyena was going to lunge at Orange
Juice.
I could not imagine that matters could get worse, but they did. The zebra snorted some of its
blood overboard. Seconds later there was a hard knock against the boat, followed by another. The
water began to churn around us with sharks. They were searching for the source of the blood, for
the food so close at hand. Their tail fins flashed out of the water, their heads swung out. The boat
was hit repeatedly. I was not afraid we would capsize-I thought the sharks would actually punch
through the metal hull and sink us.
With every bang the animals jumped and looked alarmed, but they were not to be distracted
from their main business of roaring in each others faces. I was certain the shouting match would
turn physical. Instead it broke off abruptly after a few minutes. Orange Juice, with huffs and
lip-smacking noises, turned away, and the hyena lowered its head and retreated behind the zebra’s
butchered body. The sharks, finding nothing, stopped knocking on the boat and eventually left.
Silence fell at last.
A foul and pungent smell, an earthy mix of rust and excrement, hung in the air. There was
blood everywhere, coagulating to a deep red crust. A single fly buzzed about, sounding to me like
an alarm bell of insanity. No ship, nothing at all, had appeared on the horizon that day, and now the
day was ending. When the sun slipped below the horizon, it was not only the day that died and the
poor zebra, but my family as well. With that second sunset, disbelief gave way to pain and grief.
They were dead; I could no longer deny it. What a thing to acknowledge in your heart! To lose a
brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is
supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your
life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you
seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like
losing the sun above you. It is like losing-I’m sorry, I would rather not go on. I lay down on the
tarpaulin and spent the whole night weeping and grieving, my face buried in my arms. The hyena
spent a good part of the night eating.
Chapter 47
The day broke, humid and overcast, with the wind warm and the sky a dense blanket of grey
clouds that looked like bunched-up, dirty cotton sheets. The sea had not changed. It heaved the
lifeboat up and down in a regular motion.
The zebra was still alive. I couldn't believe it. It had a two-foot-wide hole in its body, a fistula
like a freshly erupted volcano, spewed half-eaten organs glistening in the light or giving off a dull,
dry shine, yet, in its strictly essential parts, it continued to pump with life, if weakly. Movement was
confined to a tremor in the rear leg and an occasional blinking of the eyes. I was horrified. I had no
idea a living being could sustain so much injury and go on living.
The hyena was tense. It was not settling down to its night of rest despite the daylight. Perhaps
it was a result of taking in so much food; its stomach was grossly dilated. Orange Juice was in a
dangerous mood too. She was fidgeting and showing her teeth.
I stayed where I was, curled up near the prow. I was weak in body and in soul. I was afraid I
would fall into the water if I tried to balance on the oar.
The zebra was dead by noon. It was glassy-eyed and had become perfectly indifferent to the
hyena’s occasional assaults.
Violence broke out in the afternoon. Tension had risen to an unbearable level. The hyena was
yipping. Orange Juice was grunting and making loud lip-smacking noises. All of a sudden their
complaining fused and shot up to top volume. The hyena jumped over the remains of the zebra and
made for Orange Juice.
I believe I have made clear the menace of a hyena. It was certainly so clear in my mind that I
gave up on Orange Juice’s life before she even had a chance to defend it. I underestimated her. I
underestimated her grit.
She thumped the beast on the head. It was something shocking. It made my heart melt with
love and admiration and fear. Did I mention she was a former pet, callously discarded by her
Indonesian owners? Her story was like that of every inappropriate pet. It goes something like this:
The pet is bought when it is small and cute. It gives much amusement to its owners. Then it grows
in size and in appetite. It reveals itself incapable of being house-trained. Its increasing strength
makes it harder to handle. One day the maid pulls the sheet from its nest because she has decided to
wash it, or the son jokingly pinches a morsel of food from its hands-over some such seemingly
small matter, the pet flashes its teeth in anger and the family is frightened. The very next day the pet
finds itself bouncing at the back of the family Jeep in the company of its human brothers and sisters.
A jungle is entered. Everyone in the vehicle finds it a strange and formidable place. A clearing is
come to. It is briefly explored. All of a sudden the Jeep roars to life and its wheels kick up dirt and
the pet sees all the ones it has known and loved looking at it from the back window as the Jeep
speeds away. It has been left behind. The pet does not understand. It is as unprepared for this jungle
as its human siblings are. It waits around for their return, trying to quell the panic rising in it. They
do not return. The sun sets. Quickly it becomes depressed and gives up on life. It dies of hunger and
exposure in the next few days. Or is attacked by dogs.
Orange Juice could have been one of these forlorn pets. Instead she ended up at the
Pondicherry Zoo. She remained gentle and unaggressive her whole life. I have memories from when
I was a child of her never-ending arms surrounding me, her fingers, each as long as my whole hand,
picking at my hair. She was a young female practising her maternal skills. As she matured into her
full wild self, I observed her at a distance. I thought I knew her so well that I could predict her every
move. I thought I knew not only her habits but also her limits. This display of ferocity, of savage
courage, made me realize that I was wrong. All my life I had known only a part of her.
She thumped the beast on the head. And what a thump it was. The beast’s head hit the bench
it had just reached, making such a sharp noise, besides splaying its front legs flat out, that I thought
surely either the bench or its jaw or both must break . The hyena was up again in an instant, every
hair on its body as erect as the hairs on my head, but its hostility wasn’t quite so kinetic now. It
withdrew. I exulted. Orange Juice’s stirring defence brought a glow to my heart.
It didn't last long.
An adult female orang-utan cannot defeat an adult male spotted hyena. That is the plain
empirical truth. Let it become known among zoologists. Had Orange Juice been a male, had she
loomed as large on the scales as she did in my heart, it might have been another matter. But portly
and overfed though she was from living in the comfort of a zoo, even so she tipped the scales at
barely 110 pounds. Female orang-utans are half the size of males. But it is not simply a question of
weight and brute strength. Orange Juice was far from defenceless. What it comes down to is attitude
and knowledge. What does a fruit eater know about killing? Where would it learn where to bite,
how hard, for how long? An orang-utan may be taller, may have very strong and agile arms and
long canines, but if it does not know how to use these as weapons, they are of little use. The hyena,
with only its jaws, will overcome the ape because it knows what it wants and how to get it.
The hyena came back. It jumped on the bench and caught Orange Juice at the wrist before she
could strike. Orange Juice hit the hyena on the head with her other arm, but the blow only made the
beast snarl viciously. She made to bite, but the hyena moved faster. Alas, Orange Juice’s defence
lacked precision and coherence. Her fear was something useless that only hampered her. The hyena
let go of her wrist and expertly got to her throat.
Dumb with pain and horror, I watched as Orange Juice thumped the hyena ineffectually and
pulled at its hair while her throat was being squeezed by its jaws. To the end she reminded me of us:
her eyes expressed fear in such a humanlike way, as did her strained whimpers. She made an
attempt to climb onto the tarpaulin. The hyena violently shook her. She fell off the bench to the
bottom of the lifeboat, the hyena with her. I heard noises but no longer saw anything.
I was next. That much was clear to me. With some difficulty I stood up. I could hardly see
through the tears in my eyes. I was no longer crying because of my family or because of my
impending death. I was far too numb to consider either. I was crying because I was exceedingly
tired and it was time to get rest.
I advanced over the tarpaulin. Though tautly stretched at the end of the boat, it sagged a little
in the middle; it made for three or four toilsome, bouncy steps. And I had to reach over the net and
the rolled-up tarpaulin. And these efforts in a lifeboat that was constantly rolling. In the condition I
was in, it felt like a great trek. When I laid my foot on the middle cross bench, its hardness had an
invigorating effect on me, as if I had just stepped on solid ground. I planted both my feet on the
bench and enjoyed my firm stand. I was feeling dizzy, but since the capital moment of my life was
coming up this dizziness only added to my sense of frightened sublimity. I raised my hands to the
level of my chest-the weapons I had against the hyena. It looked up at me. Its mouth was red.
Orange Juice lay next to it, against the dead zebra. Her arms were spread wide open and her short
legs were folded together and slightly turned to one side. She looked like a simian Christ on the
Cross. Except for her head. She was beheaded. The neck wound was still bleeding. It was a sight
horrible to the eyes and killing to the spirit. Just before throwing myself upon the hyena, to collect
myself before the final struggle, I looked down.
Between my feet, under the bench, I beheld Richard Parker’s head. It was gigantic. It looked
the size of the planet Jupiter to my dazed senses. His paws were like volumes of Encyclopaedia
Britannica .
I made my way back to the bow and collapsed.
I spent the night in a state of delirium. I kept thinking I had slept and was awaking after
dreaming of a tiger.
clouds that looked like bunched-up, dirty cotton sheets. The sea had not changed. It heaved the
lifeboat up and down in a regular motion.
The zebra was still alive. I couldn't believe it. It had a two-foot-wide hole in its body, a fistula
like a freshly erupted volcano, spewed half-eaten organs glistening in the light or giving off a dull,
dry shine, yet, in its strictly essential parts, it continued to pump with life, if weakly. Movement was
confined to a tremor in the rear leg and an occasional blinking of the eyes. I was horrified. I had no
idea a living being could sustain so much injury and go on living.
The hyena was tense. It was not settling down to its night of rest despite the daylight. Perhaps
it was a result of taking in so much food; its stomach was grossly dilated. Orange Juice was in a
dangerous mood too. She was fidgeting and showing her teeth.
I stayed where I was, curled up near the prow. I was weak in body and in soul. I was afraid I
would fall into the water if I tried to balance on the oar.
The zebra was dead by noon. It was glassy-eyed and had become perfectly indifferent to the
hyena’s occasional assaults.
Violence broke out in the afternoon. Tension had risen to an unbearable level. The hyena was
yipping. Orange Juice was grunting and making loud lip-smacking noises. All of a sudden their
complaining fused and shot up to top volume. The hyena jumped over the remains of the zebra and
made for Orange Juice.
I believe I have made clear the menace of a hyena. It was certainly so clear in my mind that I
gave up on Orange Juice’s life before she even had a chance to defend it. I underestimated her. I
underestimated her grit.
She thumped the beast on the head. It was something shocking. It made my heart melt with
love and admiration and fear. Did I mention she was a former pet, callously discarded by her
Indonesian owners? Her story was like that of every inappropriate pet. It goes something like this:
The pet is bought when it is small and cute. It gives much amusement to its owners. Then it grows
in size and in appetite. It reveals itself incapable of being house-trained. Its increasing strength
makes it harder to handle. One day the maid pulls the sheet from its nest because she has decided to
wash it, or the son jokingly pinches a morsel of food from its hands-over some such seemingly
small matter, the pet flashes its teeth in anger and the family is frightened. The very next day the pet
finds itself bouncing at the back of the family Jeep in the company of its human brothers and sisters.
A jungle is entered. Everyone in the vehicle finds it a strange and formidable place. A clearing is
come to. It is briefly explored. All of a sudden the Jeep roars to life and its wheels kick up dirt and
the pet sees all the ones it has known and loved looking at it from the back window as the Jeep
speeds away. It has been left behind. The pet does not understand. It is as unprepared for this jungle
as its human siblings are. It waits around for their return, trying to quell the panic rising in it. They
do not return. The sun sets. Quickly it becomes depressed and gives up on life. It dies of hunger and
exposure in the next few days. Or is attacked by dogs.
Orange Juice could have been one of these forlorn pets. Instead she ended up at the
Pondicherry Zoo. She remained gentle and unaggressive her whole life. I have memories from when
I was a child of her never-ending arms surrounding me, her fingers, each as long as my whole hand,
picking at my hair. She was a young female practising her maternal skills. As she matured into her
full wild self, I observed her at a distance. I thought I knew her so well that I could predict her every
move. I thought I knew not only her habits but also her limits. This display of ferocity, of savage
courage, made me realize that I was wrong. All my life I had known only a part of her.
She thumped the beast on the head. And what a thump it was. The beast’s head hit the bench
it had just reached, making such a sharp noise, besides splaying its front legs flat out, that I thought
surely either the bench or its jaw or both must break . The hyena was up again in an instant, every
hair on its body as erect as the hairs on my head, but its hostility wasn’t quite so kinetic now. It
withdrew. I exulted. Orange Juice’s stirring defence brought a glow to my heart.
It didn't last long.
An adult female orang-utan cannot defeat an adult male spotted hyena. That is the plain
empirical truth. Let it become known among zoologists. Had Orange Juice been a male, had she
loomed as large on the scales as she did in my heart, it might have been another matter. But portly
and overfed though she was from living in the comfort of a zoo, even so she tipped the scales at
barely 110 pounds. Female orang-utans are half the size of males. But it is not simply a question of
weight and brute strength. Orange Juice was far from defenceless. What it comes down to is attitude
and knowledge. What does a fruit eater know about killing? Where would it learn where to bite,
how hard, for how long? An orang-utan may be taller, may have very strong and agile arms and
long canines, but if it does not know how to use these as weapons, they are of little use. The hyena,
with only its jaws, will overcome the ape because it knows what it wants and how to get it.
The hyena came back. It jumped on the bench and caught Orange Juice at the wrist before she
could strike. Orange Juice hit the hyena on the head with her other arm, but the blow only made the
beast snarl viciously. She made to bite, but the hyena moved faster. Alas, Orange Juice’s defence
lacked precision and coherence. Her fear was something useless that only hampered her. The hyena
let go of her wrist and expertly got to her throat.
Dumb with pain and horror, I watched as Orange Juice thumped the hyena ineffectually and
pulled at its hair while her throat was being squeezed by its jaws. To the end she reminded me of us:
her eyes expressed fear in such a humanlike way, as did her strained whimpers. She made an
attempt to climb onto the tarpaulin. The hyena violently shook her. She fell off the bench to the
bottom of the lifeboat, the hyena with her. I heard noises but no longer saw anything.
I was next. That much was clear to me. With some difficulty I stood up. I could hardly see
through the tears in my eyes. I was no longer crying because of my family or because of my
impending death. I was far too numb to consider either. I was crying because I was exceedingly
tired and it was time to get rest.
I advanced over the tarpaulin. Though tautly stretched at the end of the boat, it sagged a little
in the middle; it made for three or four toilsome, bouncy steps. And I had to reach over the net and
the rolled-up tarpaulin. And these efforts in a lifeboat that was constantly rolling. In the condition I
was in, it felt like a great trek. When I laid my foot on the middle cross bench, its hardness had an
invigorating effect on me, as if I had just stepped on solid ground. I planted both my feet on the
bench and enjoyed my firm stand. I was feeling dizzy, but since the capital moment of my life was
coming up this dizziness only added to my sense of frightened sublimity. I raised my hands to the
level of my chest-the weapons I had against the hyena. It looked up at me. Its mouth was red.
Orange Juice lay next to it, against the dead zebra. Her arms were spread wide open and her short
legs were folded together and slightly turned to one side. She looked like a simian Christ on the
Cross. Except for her head. She was beheaded. The neck wound was still bleeding. It was a sight
horrible to the eyes and killing to the spirit. Just before throwing myself upon the hyena, to collect
myself before the final struggle, I looked down.
Between my feet, under the bench, I beheld Richard Parker’s head. It was gigantic. It looked
the size of the planet Jupiter to my dazed senses. His paws were like volumes of Encyclopaedia
Britannica .
I made my way back to the bow and collapsed.
I spent the night in a state of delirium. I kept thinking I had slept and was awaking after
dreaming of a tiger.
Chapter 48
Richard Parker was so named because of a clerical error. A panther was terrorizing the
Khulna district of Bangladesh, just outside the Sundarbans. It had recently carried off a little girl.
All that was found of her was a tiny hand with a henna pattern on the palm and a few plastic
bangles. She was the seventh person killed in two months by the marauder. And it was growing
bolder. The previous victim was a man who had been attacked in broad daylight in his field. The
beast dragged him off into the forest, where it ate a good part of his head, the flesh off his right leg
and all his innards. His corpse was found hanging in the fork of a tree. The villagers kept a watch
nearby that night, hoping to surprise the panther and kill it, but it never appeared. The Forest
Department hired a professional hunter. He set up a small, hidden platform in a tree near a river
where two of the attacks had taken place. A goat was tied to a stake on the river’s bank. The hunter
waited several nights. He assumed the panther would be an old, wasted male with worn teeth,
incapable of catching anything more difficult than a human. But it was a sleek tiger that stepped
into the open one night. A female with a single cub. The goat bleated. Oddly, the cub, who looked
to be about three months old, paid little attention to the goat. It raced to the water’ s edge, where it
drank eagerly. Its mother followed suit. Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative. Only
once the tiger had quenched her thirst did she turn to the goat to satisfy her hunger. The hunter had
two rifles with him: one with real bullets, the other with immobilizing darts . This animal was not
the man-eater, but so close to human habitation she might pose a threat to the villagers, especially
as she was with cub. He picked up the gun with the darts. He fired as the tiger was about to fell the
goat. The tiger reared up and snarled and raced away. But immobilizing darts don’t bring on sleep
gently, like a good cup of tea; they knock out like a bottle of hard liquor straight up. A burst of
activity on the animal’s part makes it act all the faster. The hunter called his assistants on the radio.
They found the tiger about two hundred yards from the river. She was still conscious. Her back legs
had given way and her balance on her front legs was woozy. When the men got close, she tried to
get away but could not manage it. She turned on them, lifting a paw that was meant to kill. It only
made her lose her balance. She collapsed and the Pondicherry Zoo had two new tigers. The cub was
found in a bush close by, meowing with fear. The hunter, whose name was Richard Parker, picked
it up with his bare hands and, remembering how it had rushed to drink in the river, baptized it
Thirsty. But the shipping clerk at the Howrah train station was evidently a man both befuddled and
diligent. All the papers we received with the cub clearly stated that its name was Richard Parker,
that the hunter’s first name was Thirsty and that his family name was None Given. Father had had a
good chuckle over the mix-up and Richard Parker’ s name had stuck.
I don’t know if Thirsty None Given ever got the man-eating panther.
Khulna district of Bangladesh, just outside the Sundarbans. It had recently carried off a little girl.
All that was found of her was a tiny hand with a henna pattern on the palm and a few plastic
bangles. She was the seventh person killed in two months by the marauder. And it was growing
bolder. The previous victim was a man who had been attacked in broad daylight in his field. The
beast dragged him off into the forest, where it ate a good part of his head, the flesh off his right leg
and all his innards. His corpse was found hanging in the fork of a tree. The villagers kept a watch
nearby that night, hoping to surprise the panther and kill it, but it never appeared. The Forest
Department hired a professional hunter. He set up a small, hidden platform in a tree near a river
where two of the attacks had taken place. A goat was tied to a stake on the river’s bank. The hunter
waited several nights. He assumed the panther would be an old, wasted male with worn teeth,
incapable of catching anything more difficult than a human. But it was a sleek tiger that stepped
into the open one night. A female with a single cub. The goat bleated. Oddly, the cub, who looked
to be about three months old, paid little attention to the goat. It raced to the water’ s edge, where it
drank eagerly. Its mother followed suit. Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative. Only
once the tiger had quenched her thirst did she turn to the goat to satisfy her hunger. The hunter had
two rifles with him: one with real bullets, the other with immobilizing darts . This animal was not
the man-eater, but so close to human habitation she might pose a threat to the villagers, especially
as she was with cub. He picked up the gun with the darts. He fired as the tiger was about to fell the
goat. The tiger reared up and snarled and raced away. But immobilizing darts don’t bring on sleep
gently, like a good cup of tea; they knock out like a bottle of hard liquor straight up. A burst of
activity on the animal’s part makes it act all the faster. The hunter called his assistants on the radio.
They found the tiger about two hundred yards from the river. She was still conscious. Her back legs
had given way and her balance on her front legs was woozy. When the men got close, she tried to
get away but could not manage it. She turned on them, lifting a paw that was meant to kill. It only
made her lose her balance. She collapsed and the Pondicherry Zoo had two new tigers. The cub was
found in a bush close by, meowing with fear. The hunter, whose name was Richard Parker, picked
it up with his bare hands and, remembering how it had rushed to drink in the river, baptized it
Thirsty. But the shipping clerk at the Howrah train station was evidently a man both befuddled and
diligent. All the papers we received with the cub clearly stated that its name was Richard Parker,
that the hunter’s first name was Thirsty and that his family name was None Given. Father had had a
good chuckle over the mix-up and Richard Parker’ s name had stuck.
I don’t know if Thirsty None Given ever got the man-eating panther.
Chapter 49
In the morning I could not move. I was pinned by weakness to the tarpaulin. Even thinking
was exhausting. I applied myself to thinking straight. At length, as slowly as a caravan of camels
crossing a desert, some thoughts came together.
The day was like the previous one, warm and overcast, the clouds low, the breeze light. That
was one thought. The boat was rocking gently, that was another.
I thought of sustenance for the first time. I had not had a drop to drink or a bite to eat or a
minute of sleep in three days. Finding this obvious explanation for my weakness brought me a little
strength.
Richard Parker was still on board. In fact, he was directly beneath me. Incredible that such a
thing should need consent to be true, but it was only after much deliberation, upon assessing various
mental items and points of view, that I concluded that it was not a dream or a delusion or a
misplaced memory or a fancy or any other such falsity, but a solid, true thing witnessed while in a
weakened, highly agitated state. The truth of it would be confirmed as soon as I felt well enough to
investigate.
How I had failed to notice for two and a half days a 450-pound Bengal tiger in a lifeboat
twenty-six feet long was a conundrum I would have to try to crack later, when I had more energy.
The feat surely made Richard Parker the largest stowaway, proportionally speaking, in the history
of navigation. From tip of nose to tip of tail he took up over a third of the length of the ship he was
on.
You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much
better. We see that in sports all the time, don’t we? The tennis challenger starts strong but soon
loses confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the
challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly he’s
playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points. So it was with me.
To cope with a hyena seemed remotely possible, but I was so obviously outmatched by Richard
Parker that it wasn’t even worth worrying about. With a tiger aboard, my life was over. That being
settled, why not do something about my parched throat?
I believe it was this that saved my life that morning, that I was quite literally dying of thirst.
Now that the word had popped into my head I couldn’t think of anything else, as if the word itself
were salty and the more I thought of it, the worse the effect. I have heard that the hunger for air
exceeds as a compelling sensation the thirst for water. Only for a few minutes, I say. After a few
minutes you die and the discomfort of asphyxiation goes away. Whereas thirst is a drawn-out affair.
Look: Christ on the Cross died of suffocation, but His only complaint was of thirst. If thirst can be
so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It was
enough to make me go raving mad. I have never known a worse physical hell than this putrid taste
and pasty feeling in the mouth, this unbearable pressure at the back of the throat, this sensation that
my blood was turning to a thick syrup that barely flowed. Truly, by comparison, a tiger was
nothing.
And so I pushed aside all thoughts of Richard Parker and fearlessly went exploring for fresh
water .
The divining rod in my mind dipped sharply and a spring gushed water when I remembered
that I was on a genuine, regulation lifeboat and that such a lifeboat was surely outfitted with
supplies. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposition. What captain would fail in so
elementary a way to ensure the safety of his crew? What ship chandler would not think of making a
little extra money under the noble guise of saving lives? It was settled. There was water aboard. All
I had to do was find it.
Which meant I had to move.
I made it to the middle of the boat, to the edge of the tarpaulin. It was a hard crawl. I felt I was
climbing the side of a volcano and I was about to look over the rim into a boiling cauldron of
orange lava. I lay flat. I carefully brought my head over. I did not look over any more than I had to.
I did not see Richard Parker. The hyena was plainly visible, though. It was back behind what was
left of the zebra. It was looking at me.
I was no longer afraid of it. It wasn’t ten feet away, yet my heart didn’t skip a beat. Richard
Parker’s presence had at least that useful aspect. To be afraid of this ridiculous dog when there was
a tiger about was like being afraid of splinters when trees are falling down. I became very angry at
the animal. “You ugly, foul creature,” I muttered. The only reason I didn’t stand up and beat it off
the lifeboat with a stick was lack of strength and stick, not lack of heart.
Did the hyena sense something of my mastery? Did it say to itself, “Super alpha is watching
me-I better not move?” I don’t know. At any rate, it didn’t move. In fact, in the way it ducked its
head it seemed to want to hide from me. But it was no use hiding. It would get its just deserts soon
enough.
Richard Parker also explained the animals’ strange behaviour. Now it was clear why the
hyena had confined itself to such an absurdly small space behind the zebra and why it had waited so
long before killing it. It was fear of the greater beast and fear of touching the greater beast’ s food.
The strained, temporary peace between Orange Juice and the hyena, and my reprieve, were no
doubt due to the same reason: in the face of such a superior predator, all of us were prey, and
normal ways of preying were affected. It seemed the presence of a tiger had saved me from a
hyena-surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
But the great beast was not behaving like a great beast, to such an extent that the hyena had
taken liberties. Richard Parker’s passivity, and for three long days, needed explaining. Only in two
ways could I account for it: sedation and seasickness. Father regularly sedated a number of the
animals to lessen their stress. Might he have sedated Richard Parker shortly before the ship sank?
Had the shock of the shipwreck-the noises, the falling into the sea, the terrible struggle to swim to
the lifeboat-increased the effect of the sedative? Had seasickness taken over after that? These were
the only plausible explanations I could come up with.
I lost interest in the question. Only water interested me.
I took stock of the lifeboat.
was exhausting. I applied myself to thinking straight. At length, as slowly as a caravan of camels
crossing a desert, some thoughts came together.
The day was like the previous one, warm and overcast, the clouds low, the breeze light. That
was one thought. The boat was rocking gently, that was another.
I thought of sustenance for the first time. I had not had a drop to drink or a bite to eat or a
minute of sleep in three days. Finding this obvious explanation for my weakness brought me a little
strength.
Richard Parker was still on board. In fact, he was directly beneath me. Incredible that such a
thing should need consent to be true, but it was only after much deliberation, upon assessing various
mental items and points of view, that I concluded that it was not a dream or a delusion or a
misplaced memory or a fancy or any other such falsity, but a solid, true thing witnessed while in a
weakened, highly agitated state. The truth of it would be confirmed as soon as I felt well enough to
investigate.
How I had failed to notice for two and a half days a 450-pound Bengal tiger in a lifeboat
twenty-six feet long was a conundrum I would have to try to crack later, when I had more energy.
The feat surely made Richard Parker the largest stowaway, proportionally speaking, in the history
of navigation. From tip of nose to tip of tail he took up over a third of the length of the ship he was
on.
You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much
better. We see that in sports all the time, don’t we? The tennis challenger starts strong but soon
loses confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the
challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly he’s
playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points. So it was with me.
To cope with a hyena seemed remotely possible, but I was so obviously outmatched by Richard
Parker that it wasn’t even worth worrying about. With a tiger aboard, my life was over. That being
settled, why not do something about my parched throat?
I believe it was this that saved my life that morning, that I was quite literally dying of thirst.
Now that the word had popped into my head I couldn’t think of anything else, as if the word itself
were salty and the more I thought of it, the worse the effect. I have heard that the hunger for air
exceeds as a compelling sensation the thirst for water. Only for a few minutes, I say. After a few
minutes you die and the discomfort of asphyxiation goes away. Whereas thirst is a drawn-out affair.
Look: Christ on the Cross died of suffocation, but His only complaint was of thirst. If thirst can be
so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It was
enough to make me go raving mad. I have never known a worse physical hell than this putrid taste
and pasty feeling in the mouth, this unbearable pressure at the back of the throat, this sensation that
my blood was turning to a thick syrup that barely flowed. Truly, by comparison, a tiger was
nothing.
And so I pushed aside all thoughts of Richard Parker and fearlessly went exploring for fresh
water .
The divining rod in my mind dipped sharply and a spring gushed water when I remembered
that I was on a genuine, regulation lifeboat and that such a lifeboat was surely outfitted with
supplies. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposition. What captain would fail in so
elementary a way to ensure the safety of his crew? What ship chandler would not think of making a
little extra money under the noble guise of saving lives? It was settled. There was water aboard. All
I had to do was find it.
Which meant I had to move.
I made it to the middle of the boat, to the edge of the tarpaulin. It was a hard crawl. I felt I was
climbing the side of a volcano and I was about to look over the rim into a boiling cauldron of
orange lava. I lay flat. I carefully brought my head over. I did not look over any more than I had to.
I did not see Richard Parker. The hyena was plainly visible, though. It was back behind what was
left of the zebra. It was looking at me.
I was no longer afraid of it. It wasn’t ten feet away, yet my heart didn’t skip a beat. Richard
Parker’s presence had at least that useful aspect. To be afraid of this ridiculous dog when there was
a tiger about was like being afraid of splinters when trees are falling down. I became very angry at
the animal. “You ugly, foul creature,” I muttered. The only reason I didn’t stand up and beat it off
the lifeboat with a stick was lack of strength and stick, not lack of heart.
Did the hyena sense something of my mastery? Did it say to itself, “Super alpha is watching
me-I better not move?” I don’t know. At any rate, it didn’t move. In fact, in the way it ducked its
head it seemed to want to hide from me. But it was no use hiding. It would get its just deserts soon
enough.
Richard Parker also explained the animals’ strange behaviour. Now it was clear why the
hyena had confined itself to such an absurdly small space behind the zebra and why it had waited so
long before killing it. It was fear of the greater beast and fear of touching the greater beast’ s food.
The strained, temporary peace between Orange Juice and the hyena, and my reprieve, were no
doubt due to the same reason: in the face of such a superior predator, all of us were prey, and
normal ways of preying were affected. It seemed the presence of a tiger had saved me from a
hyena-surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
But the great beast was not behaving like a great beast, to such an extent that the hyena had
taken liberties. Richard Parker’s passivity, and for three long days, needed explaining. Only in two
ways could I account for it: sedation and seasickness. Father regularly sedated a number of the
animals to lessen their stress. Might he have sedated Richard Parker shortly before the ship sank?
Had the shock of the shipwreck-the noises, the falling into the sea, the terrible struggle to swim to
the lifeboat-increased the effect of the sedative? Had seasickness taken over after that? These were
the only plausible explanations I could come up with.
I lost interest in the question. Only water interested me.
I took stock of the lifeboat.
Chapter 50
It was three and a half feet deep, eight feet wide and twenty-six feet long, exactly. I know
because it was printed on one of the side benches in black letters. It also said that the lifeboat was
designed to accommodate a maximum of thirty-two people. Wouldn’t that have been merry, sharing
it with so many? Instead we were three and it was awfully crowded. The boat was symmetrically
shaped, with rounded ends that were hard to tell apart. The stern was hinted at by a small fixed
rudder, no more than a rearward extension of the keel, while the bow, except for my addition,
featured a stem with the saddest, bluntest prow in boat-building history. The aluminum hull was
studded with rivets and painted white.
That was the outside of the lifeboat. Inside, it was not as spacious as might be expected
because of the side benches and the buoyancy tanks. The side benches ran the whole length of the
boat, merging at the bow and stern to form end benches that were roughly triangular in shape. The
benches were the top surfaces of the sealed buoyancy tanks. The side benches were one and a half
feet wide and the end benches were three feet deep; the open space of the lifeboat was thus twenty
feet long and five feet wide. That made a territory of one hundred square feet for Richard Parker.
Spanning this space width-wise were three cross benches, including the one smashed by the zebra.
These benches were two feet wide and were evenly spaced. They were two feet above the floor of
the boat-the play Richard Parker had before he would knock his head against the ceiling, so to
speak, if he were beneath a bench. Under the tarpaulin, he had another twelve inches of space, the
distance between the gunnel, which supported the tarpaulin, and the benches, so three feet in all,
barely enough for him to stand. The floor, consisting of narrow planks of treated wood, was flat and
the vertical sides of the buoyancy tanks were at right angles to it . So, curiously, the boat had
rounded ends and rounded sides, but the interior volume was rectangular.
It seems orange-such a nice Hindu colour-is the colour of survival because the whole inside of
the boat and the tarpaulin and the life jackets and the lifebuoy and the oars and most every other
significant object aboard was orange. Even the plastic, beadless whistles were orange.
The words Tsimshian and Panama were printed on each side of the bow in stark, black,
roman capitals.
The tarpaulin was made of tough, treated canvas, rough on the skin after a while. It had been
unrolled to just past the middle cross bench. So one cross bench was hidden beneath the tarpaulin,
in Richard Parker’s den; the middle cross bench was just beyond the edge of the tarpaulin, in the
open; and the third cross bench lay broken beneath the dead zebra.
There were six oarlocks, U-shaped notches in the gunnel for holding an oar in place, and five
oars, since I had lost one trying to push Richard Parker away. Three oars rested on one side bench,
one rested on the other and one made up my life-saving prow. I doubted the usefulness of these oars
as a means of propulsion. This lifeboat was no racing shell. It was a heavy, solid construction
designed for stolid floating, not for navigating, though I suppose that if we had been thirty-two to
row we could have made some headway.
I did not grasp all these details-and many more-right away. They came to my notice with time
and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some
small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no
longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that
would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of
invention, how very true.
because it was printed on one of the side benches in black letters. It also said that the lifeboat was
designed to accommodate a maximum of thirty-two people. Wouldn’t that have been merry, sharing
it with so many? Instead we were three and it was awfully crowded. The boat was symmetrically
shaped, with rounded ends that were hard to tell apart. The stern was hinted at by a small fixed
rudder, no more than a rearward extension of the keel, while the bow, except for my addition,
featured a stem with the saddest, bluntest prow in boat-building history. The aluminum hull was
studded with rivets and painted white.
That was the outside of the lifeboat. Inside, it was not as spacious as might be expected
because of the side benches and the buoyancy tanks. The side benches ran the whole length of the
boat, merging at the bow and stern to form end benches that were roughly triangular in shape. The
benches were the top surfaces of the sealed buoyancy tanks. The side benches were one and a half
feet wide and the end benches were three feet deep; the open space of the lifeboat was thus twenty
feet long and five feet wide. That made a territory of one hundred square feet for Richard Parker.
Spanning this space width-wise were three cross benches, including the one smashed by the zebra.
These benches were two feet wide and were evenly spaced. They were two feet above the floor of
the boat-the play Richard Parker had before he would knock his head against the ceiling, so to
speak, if he were beneath a bench. Under the tarpaulin, he had another twelve inches of space, the
distance between the gunnel, which supported the tarpaulin, and the benches, so three feet in all,
barely enough for him to stand. The floor, consisting of narrow planks of treated wood, was flat and
the vertical sides of the buoyancy tanks were at right angles to it . So, curiously, the boat had
rounded ends and rounded sides, but the interior volume was rectangular.
It seems orange-such a nice Hindu colour-is the colour of survival because the whole inside of
the boat and the tarpaulin and the life jackets and the lifebuoy and the oars and most every other
significant object aboard was orange. Even the plastic, beadless whistles were orange.
The words Tsimshian and Panama were printed on each side of the bow in stark, black,
roman capitals.
The tarpaulin was made of tough, treated canvas, rough on the skin after a while. It had been
unrolled to just past the middle cross bench. So one cross bench was hidden beneath the tarpaulin,
in Richard Parker’s den; the middle cross bench was just beyond the edge of the tarpaulin, in the
open; and the third cross bench lay broken beneath the dead zebra.
There were six oarlocks, U-shaped notches in the gunnel for holding an oar in place, and five
oars, since I had lost one trying to push Richard Parker away. Three oars rested on one side bench,
one rested on the other and one made up my life-saving prow. I doubted the usefulness of these oars
as a means of propulsion. This lifeboat was no racing shell. It was a heavy, solid construction
designed for stolid floating, not for navigating, though I suppose that if we had been thirty-two to
row we could have made some headway.
I did not grasp all these details-and many more-right away. They came to my notice with time
and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some
small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no
longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that
would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of
invention, how very true.
Remain will be continue on 8 January
0 Comments