Life of Pi

Life of Pi

I have recently read that wonderful story.

A shipwreck, a lifeboat, a 16 -year-old Indian boy and a Royal Bengal tiger. Sounds really tacky, but it is actually a very interesting story and I loved it. Seen the film as well - very good and follows the book very closely. Though, I think a blinded shipwrecked Frenchman was missing in the film. In the book he wanted to kill Pi (in order to eat him) but Richard Parker (the tiger) took care of him. And that was the only person he met in his 227 days of struggle to survive at sea. How tragic.

Pi was a very dovout believer. He believed in God and practised Hiduism, Christianity and Islam all at the same time. When he had been asked by his father to choose one religion, he replied that according to Gandhi all religions were right and true. He thanked Krishna for introducing him to Jesus.

After discussions with his favourite teacher, who was an atheist, who believed only in reason and science and who claimed that religion is darkness; Pi came to his own very interesting conclusions: "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 fas as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap. I will 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 anquished 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 trasportation."