'Life of Pi' was on my list since December 2012 when I first read about the movie but the time to watch it actually arrived in Jan 2013 -
things happen when they are supposed to happen, not before, not after !
To be frank, I haven't given much deep thought to the movie and I don't intend to in the near future(also, I don't intend to read the novel) but I thought I must at least pen down some of the thoughts that ran across my mind after watching the movie.
1.
Pi and the Religion
First, some striking quotes :
- If God is so perfect and we are not, why would he want to create all this?Why does he need us at all?
- Believing in everything at the same time is same as not believing in anything at all !
- And how can he find his way if he does not choose a path?
- Faith is a house with many rooms.
And no room for doubt?
Oh ! Plenty ! On every floor. Doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing ! After all, you cannot know the strength of your faith until it is tested
As a child, Pi is normal at least about one thing -
asking questions and seeking answers. As adults, we do not appreciate these things, at least the education system, the 'bringing up kids' doesn't suggest that we do ! Pi's father has his own ideology and tries to guide Pi accordingly - this is what all the fathers do and MUST do. After all, they have seen the World, had myriad experiences and based on them, they have/had formed their ideologies and beliefs ! However vague and unconvincing these may seem, but every man has ample experiences in his life when he realizes "Yeah ! What Dad said was right"
The first quote is my favourite from the movie !!! Since my teens, I always wondered that if God is so powerful and merciful, why does He allow Man to suffer, to commit wrong things at all ? Why does He need to manage this entire Earth, the cycle of Life, Death, Afterlife and Reincarnation? But as the time passed, Nature, the Indian saints, the History and most important, the people, their behaviour brought me to the conclusion that
Man is the God's identity - He would have no importance, no value, no recognition without Man ! Its His ego, His desire to be worshipped, His desire to rule, His desire to be treated as important and serious is what made Him create Man - no other reason ! And this is the time when I realized how CORRECT the Hindu religion and the teachings of Indian saints were - Life, Death, Heaven, Hell, Reincarnation etc. everything is an illusion ! The real goal of Man must be
Moksha ! I may be horribly wrong but to make things simple to understand and explain, I treat 'Moksha' as a Shift+Delete/shred command on a file on a Windows/Linux OS - permanent deletion, no existence anywhere ! While this idea may sound rueful, sick, desolate, negative, this is the Truth !!!
The scene in which(I unfortunately couldn't provide here) Pi's father asks him to reason, to think rationally is the most practical piece of advice for a beginner on the path to understand Religion and/or Spiritualism -
one can't just hang-on abstract thoughts and philosophy; one has to relate it to the real life and test it ! That's how the Faith must be tested and that's how a Man progresses on the path.
2.
The Inner Self/the Subconscious(?)/The Soul
It often happens that our instincts/mind/whatever notices unusual things, tries to point out patterns etc. but we conveniently choose to disregard it. I again realized this when the movie was about to end - when Pi reveals the real story ! I was surprised and unconvinced that how could a hyena and a tiger could stay under a cover together without causing a trouble and why does the tiger suddenly spring into action out of nowhere and attacks the hyena !
The Inner Self is again a seemingly abstract concept but to simplify it, we can loosely/vaguely relate it to the instinctive mind that all of us have. In the context of the movie, I agree and have drawn the following conclusions :
- To survive in the 'practical' world like a common man, it must be tamed
- It must be KEPT ALIVE - if you kill it, you lose your identity !
- Periodically, one must listen to what it has to say, spend time with it
3.
Pi and the Island
The biggest philosophical depiction in the movie, is the island on which Pi lands up. Pi comes there wandering and in a dire situation - he needs food and water to survive ! In a way, he finds a hope, a small source of energy there, so does the tiger ! But later, the tiger runs desperately towards the boat while Pi stays on the island. Pi finds a human tooth and discovers that the island is carnivorous and the water is acidic at night. He assumes that someone came on that island, didn't try to get away from there and died as loneliness crept upon. It serves as a warning to Pi that no matter what the results, he must reach back to the world. But the island teaches makes him realize - if he hadn't found it, he would have died; if he would have stayed there, he would have been lost and died ! He believes that God is watching over him and he must continue his journey.
Depending upon the (in)sanity of each brain, I think multiple conclusions can be drawn :
- The obvious and the most realistic one is not to get stuck at a place during a journey just because you find solace in there. The journey is more important
- A more pessimistic variant of the above conclusion is that the instincts often warn us about the danger but the conscious mind trample it ! There are incidents, places, patterns and people around us which may give pleasure, appear helpful initially but it may harm us later. Worse, what you get out of these entities and much more than that is lost later - probably when your times are bad, when you are of no purpose or whatever ! But all that the island gave him by the day, took away again, by the night !
3.
Pi's return to the World
The striking feature of this part of the movie is Pi's thoughts about Richard Parker. Pi has spend a good amount of time with his inner self and must have compared it with the Life he had been living in the 'real' world till then. Now, when he's back to the 'real' world, his inner self disappears !
- The most hard-hitting message, in my humble opinion, was that the jungle is actually the Civilization into which the inner mind/instincts get lost
- Another, technically correct, interpretation is that upon the arrival in the Civilization, the inner mind sees no scope of living in there(it will have to go wild and soon will be hunted down), hence, retreats to the jungle where the Civilization may not follow !
