We all love happy endings.
Every novel, every movie and every story comes to an end and most of the times the end defines how we feel about the story in retrospect. Many a times we hypothesize-"If this had happened the story would have ended that way..." to concoct an alternative ending especially if the story leaves us with a glum feeling...
And sometimes there comes a story which captivates and amazes all throughout but in the end leaves us with a lingering puzzlement that simply refuses to go away! With the end hinting that the story could be a schizophrenic account of the protagonist, you cant help but feel "Was all that I read a lie? Or was it not?What is the story really about!" And then when I resort to the web to give me answers, each answer throws back a new question and prolongs the puzzlement...
Life of Pi is that extraordinary story.
The startling yet simple story of a boy marooned in the ocean on a small boat with a ferocious Bengal tiger is, apparently allegorical with layers of hidden meanings and musings on religion and humanity. Stories with hidden meanings and references have always amazed and thrilled me but Life of Pi is just puzzlingly heartbreaking. As the end credits rolled, how I wished to be one of those kids in the cinema hall enjoying the spectacle of a tiger and a boy on the boat and not having to understand or make sense all the supposed gory realities... How I wished for a Jungle-bookish scene of bonding between the tiger and the boy- a comforting end to all the travails they faced at sea together...
But that was not to be. Maybe that's why the story puzzles and enchants... that's why the story lingers...
My search for answers to the many questions life of pi evoked in me made me read a lot about the author Yann Martel. And I found this fascinating piece of wisdom in one particular interview that kind of eased my restlessness to look for meaning to the story, although in an inexplicable way, and made me write this post in the first place:
"Lets say you are chocolate icecream. If you are choclateness through and through, if all you have ever known your whole life is choclateness, then on one level you have no idea what choclateness is, though it permeats your whole soul. You will only understand choclateness once you meet strawberryness and vanillaness and butterscotchness. Its in meeting the other that you start to understand first that you are different and then how you are different."
Every novel, every movie and every story comes to an end and most of the times the end defines how we feel about the story in retrospect. Many a times we hypothesize-"If this had happened the story would have ended that way..." to concoct an alternative ending especially if the story leaves us with a glum feeling...
And sometimes there comes a story which captivates and amazes all throughout but in the end leaves us with a lingering puzzlement that simply refuses to go away! With the end hinting that the story could be a schizophrenic account of the protagonist, you cant help but feel "Was all that I read a lie? Or was it not?What is the story really about!" And then when I resort to the web to give me answers, each answer throws back a new question and prolongs the puzzlement...
Life of Pi is that extraordinary story.
The startling yet simple story of a boy marooned in the ocean on a small boat with a ferocious Bengal tiger is, apparently allegorical with layers of hidden meanings and musings on religion and humanity. Stories with hidden meanings and references have always amazed and thrilled me but Life of Pi is just puzzlingly heartbreaking. As the end credits rolled, how I wished to be one of those kids in the cinema hall enjoying the spectacle of a tiger and a boy on the boat and not having to understand or make sense all the supposed gory realities... How I wished for a Jungle-bookish scene of bonding between the tiger and the boy- a comforting end to all the travails they faced at sea together...
But that was not to be. Maybe that's why the story puzzles and enchants... that's why the story lingers...
My search for answers to the many questions life of pi evoked in me made me read a lot about the author Yann Martel. And I found this fascinating piece of wisdom in one particular interview that kind of eased my restlessness to look for meaning to the story, although in an inexplicable way, and made me write this post in the first place:
"Lets say you are chocolate icecream. If you are choclateness through and through, if all you have ever known your whole life is choclateness, then on one level you have no idea what choclateness is, though it permeats your whole soul. You will only understand choclateness once you meet strawberryness and vanillaness and butterscotchness. Its in meeting the other that you start to understand first that you are different and then how you are different."
