heartshape

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A hundred cheers to Yann Martel and the Life of Pi! Now I understand why its hot in the bookshelves.Curiosity got the best of me and I couldn't stop wondering what made a 401-page account of a 16-year-old Indian boy's struggle at sea a bestseller. Picture out a hundred chapters of a sole shipwreck survivor's life in a boat in the middle of the Pacific for 227 days. It sounds uneventful but, thank goodness I read it, the Life of Pi is anything but ordinary.

Did I mention that the 16-year-old Indian boy shared the lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger?

• It has a happy ending (not that its special or anything)
  
• The main character has three religions (Whoa!)
• Includes survival tips should you (or I) ever find yourselves (myself) in a predicament such as he was in.
• Gives more than sufficient information about the animal kingdom and religion.

And like all things borrowed, the book must now be returned to its owner. I must part with it but not without jotting down memories of Pi Patel.

excerpt from Chapter 23, page 84

...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 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 exist-ence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing - these are miracles enough for us."

"Feathers and rain are 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 unto 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 questions 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.

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Hmmm, and I thought religious leaders are calm and open-minded.
Tsk tsk tsk...be it declared that sometimes the most pious spiritual leaders could come into blows with other pious spiritual leaders. Amazing, this world is.