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Monday, August 09, 2004

Life of Pi

Last time I was in Haifa, one of the guys there at the Israeli firm I was visiting had recommended very highly Yann Martell's Bestseller "The Life of Pi" to me. He said it was about this Indian boy "Pi Patel" who was ship wrecked on a boat with a Bengal tiger, and it sounded like an interesting read.

I forget all about the book, until I found myself checking out the small book store at the Central. I found the book there, bought it, then read it straight through.
Its a wonderful piece of fiction, a rollicking story about young Piscine Patel, the son of a zoo owner in Pondicherry. In school, everybody called him "Pissing" Patel, until finally, pissed off, he introduced himself as "Pi Patel" in high school and the name stuck. In anticipation of hard times, the family decided to move to Canada, animals and all on a ship. The ship gets wrecked in a storm, and Pi finds himself on a boat with a zebra, a hyena and a... Bengal tiger!

Once again, this book slipped my mind, until yesterday I read about Manoj Night Shyamalan, the ace director whose claim to fame is the eminently watchable "Sixth Sense". Manoj is about to make a movie on this book.

Here's a movie I'm looking forward to.

2 comments:

Ekta said...

hey,
Have seen this book twice in two different stores last week and have been thinking of picking it up but decided on something else!!
Guess after your blog will need to go and read thru

Swar Thounaojam said...

gd that MNS is publicly announcing his next flick will be based on 'life of pi'. another case of plagiarism like the current one plaguing 'the village' will make him 'the village idiot'.