Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

That voice. Strange in a familiar way, familiar in a strange way. I felt a smile welling up in me.

“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?”

Aw

the fiction guarantees their social well-being and staves off violent anarchy.

“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.”

As the ship was worked out of the dock and piloted out to sea, I wildly waved goodbye to India.

Idk why i thought theyd get on a plane lmfao

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.

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.

We’re in hell yet still we’re afraid of immortality.

I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat.

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.

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 like these words together

landlubber

Huh. I always thought it was landlover

It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.

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.

but one terror at a time, Pacific before tiger.

I only had to ensure my survival for the next few hours until this rescue ship came.

It is when the moon rises that the hyena’s day starts, and it proves to be a devastating hunter.

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.

It is not their gastric juices that limit hyenas, but the power of their jaws, which is formidable.

An animal to pain the eye and chill the heart.

I seemed to be floating in pure, abstract blackness.

The calm sea opened up around me like a great book.

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

It is a particularly funny thing to read human traits in animals, especially in apes and monkeys, where it is so easy.

I was just another animal that had lost everything and was vowed to death.

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.

I had no idea a living being could sustain so much injury and go on living.

Yeah. Youd be surprised

Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative.

If thirst can be so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human.

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.

How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.

Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare,

time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you.

You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. The sight brings on an oppressive sadness that no car about to hit you or...

The sea, inches beneath me yet too far for my eyes, buffeted the raft.

I wasn’t Tarzan. I was a puny, feeble, vegetarian life form.

Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy.

Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble.

You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. Y...

Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.

Prusten?

I learned something new today

(Only small cats purr breathing both ways. It is one of the characteristics that distinguishes big cats from small cats. Another is that only big cats can roar. A good thing that is. I’m afraid the popularity of the domestic cat would drop very quickly if little kitty could roar its displeasure.)

Prusten is the quietest of tiger calls, a puff through the nose to express friendliness and harmless intentions.

Do not drink urine. Or sea water. Or bird blood.