“I have a story that will make you believe in God.”
You must have read it before. I know, I’m a little slow on the pick-up.
I’m only 101 pages through but I HAVE to make a post about this book.
It’s made me laugh every 2 pages or so. Out loud. Which made it difficult for Gin to sleep. What with passages like:
I have nothing to say about 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.
Okay, maybe this is less funny and more self-affirming.
But what I liked from the first 101 pages is the way this guy looks at religion and spirituality. He looks at atheist as brothers and sisters of a different 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’s not atheist who get me in a craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsamane. If Christ playedf 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.
Pi has religiously indifferent parents but carries a Hindu identity. Then he discovers Jesus, and when the priest endorses his belief, Pi is so overjoyed that he runs to the nearest Hindu temple to offer thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity he found so compelling, in his way.
!!! Love it.
One Good Friday in church some 20 years ago, upon discovering that Christ had died, I told my mum, “thank God there’s Muruga!” It is no surprise that these matters make sense to children. My question is, where along the way do we learn to be so myopic in our beliefs that we fail to see the divinity in all religions?
Then in the book, lo and behold, Pi becomes a Muslim! “I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it.”
Never mind this fascinating journey which makes complete sense to Pi but baffles and frustrates the priest, pandit and imam. I am most taken by Pi’s (Martel’s?) opinions on atheists and agnostics. I mean, chew on 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 o 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.
So what do you think?
I love this book. I read it early this year, and I couldn’t put it down. Keep reading… you’ll love it even more as you get closer to the end.
ya.. agree.. u are slow LOL
love this book! can u believe it that they want to make a movie out of this??
Funny… maybe I wasn’t a good reader, I read this book halfway couple of years back but I couldn’t finish it! Maybe I should pick it up again after this. :)
what do i think? i think ‘thank god there’s muruga’ was the funniest thing ever, ahahaha
Manesh, this book came highly recommended by my friend Travis Shultz in the Philippines.
I read it and was extremely disappointed. Like you, I thought the first few quarter of the book was excellent, where Martel does well in portraying religious faith through the eyes of a boy. I don’t know how far you are into the book, but I’ll save the story and say that it took me longer than normal to get through it. It just didn’t capture me. That said, it was exactly the opposite for my friend Travis, he thought it was excellent! Mind you, Travis reads a lot and loves his fiction.
Anyway, I’d like to know your thoughts when you finish reading this book.
i ♥ life of pi.
you should read yann martel’s other book “self”. that’s a psychedelic one.