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acclaim for yann martel s life of pi life of pi is not just a readable and engaging novel it s a finely twisted length of yarn yarn implying a far-fetched story you can t quite swallow whole but can t dismiss outright life of pi is in this tradition a story of uncertain veracity made credible by the art of the yarn-spinner like its noteworthy ancestors among which i take to be robinson crusoe gulliver s travels the ancient mariner moby dick and pincher martin it s a tale of disaster at sea coupled with miraculous survival a boys adventure for grownups margaret atwood the sunday times london a fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic cunning despairing and resilient this novel is an impressive achievement martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master publisher s weekly starred review life of pi has a buoyant exotic insistence reminiscent of edgar allen poe s most gothic fiction oddities abound and the storytelling is first-rate yann martel has written a novel full of grisly reality outlandish plot inventive setting and thought-provoking questions about the value and purpose of fiction the edmonton journal martel s ceaselessly clever writing [and artful occasionally hilarious internal dialogue make a fine argument for the divinity of good art the gazette astounding and beautiful the book is a pleasure not only for the subtleties of its philosophy but also for its ingenious and surprising story martel is a confident heartfelt artist and his imagination is cared for in a writing style that is both unmistakable and marvelously reserved the ending of life of pi is a show of such sophisticated genius that i could scarcely keep my eyes in my head as i read it the vancouver sun i guarantee that you will not be able to put this book down it is a realistic gripping story of survival at sea [martel s imagination is powerful his range enormous his capacity for persuasion almost limitless i predict that yann martel will develop into one of canada s great writers the hamilton spectator life of pi is a marvelous feat of imagination and inquiry yann martel has earned his stripes as a novelist of grand ideas and sports them here as surely as richard parker the majestic bengal tiger wears his own black and orange skin the ottawa x press yann martel life of pi a novel

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author s note this book was born as i was hungry let me explain in the spring of 1996 my second book a novel came out in canada it didn t fare well reviewers were puzzled or damned it with faint praise then readers ignored it despite my best efforts at playing the clown or the trapeze artist the media circus made no difference the book did not move books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer and mine was the gangly unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team it vanished quickly and quietly the fiasco did not affect me too much i had already moved on to another story a novel set in portugal in 1939 only i was feeling restless and i had a little money so i flew to bombay this is not so illogical if you realize three things that a stint in india will beat the restlessness out of any living creature that a little money can go a long way there and that a novel set in portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with portugal in 1939 i had been to india before in the north for five months on that first trip i had come to the subcontinent completely unprepared actually i had a preparation of one word when i told a friend who knew the country well of my travel plans he said casually they speak a funny english in india they like words like bamboozle i remembered his words as my plane started its descent towards delhi so the word bamboozle was my one preparation for the rich noisy functioning madness of india i used the word on occasion and truth be told it served me well to a clerk at a train station i said i didn t think the fare would be so expensive you re not trying to bamboozle me are you he smiled and chanted no sir there is no bamboozlement here i have quoted you the correct fare this second time to india i knew better what to expect and i knew what i wanted i would settle in a hill station and write my novel i had visions of myself sitting at a table on a large veranda my notes spread out in front of me next to a steaming cup of tea green hills heavy with mists would lie at my feet and the shrill cries of monkeys would fill my ears the weather would be just right requiring a light sweater mornings and evenings and something short-sleeved midday thus set up pen in hand for the sake of greater truth i would turn portugal into a fiction that s what fiction is about isn t it the selective transforming of reality the twisting of it to bring out its essence what need did i have to go to portugal the lady who ran the place would tell me stories about the struggle to boot the british out we would agree on what i was to have for lunch and supper the next day after my writing day was over i would go for walks in the rolling hills of the tea estates unfortunately the novel sputtered coughed and died it happened in matheran not far from bombay a small hill station with some monkeys but no tea estates it s a misery peculiar to wouldbe 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.

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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-louis and kepis caps for the policemen i was at the indian coffee house on nehru street it s one big room with green walls and a high ceiling fans whirl above you to keep the warm humid air moving the place is furnished to capacity with identical square tables each with its complement of four chairs you sit where you can with whoever is at a table the coffee is good and they serve french toast conversation is easy to come by and so a spry bright-eyed elderly man with great shocks of pure white hair was talking to me i confirmed to him that canada was cold and that french was indeed spoken in parts of it and that i liked india and so on and so forth the usual light talk between friendly curious indians and foreign backpackers he took in my line of work with a widening of the eyes and a nodding of the head it was time to go i had my hand up trying to catch my waiter s eye to get the bill.

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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

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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 part one toronto and pondicherry chapter i my suffering left me sad and gloomy.

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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

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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 life 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 lakshmi 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

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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 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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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,

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p. 14

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

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p. 15

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

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