ZEE JLF 2019: Yann Martel explains why he chose meerkats in Life of Pi

The fourth day of Zee JLF began with a bang as Yann Martel – the celebrated author of Life of Pi – talked to Jerry Pinto about his work, the importance of language, his thought process, writing techniques and his love for allegories.

Why he writes in English

Despite being from a household where French was the lingua franca, he preferred to write in English for various reasons.

Displaying a Professor Henry Higgins-like love for the English language, Yann Martel hailed English for its simplified grammar, plasticity and its ability to borrow from various languages. He also said that English allows him space.

He observed that there were various iterations of English across the world, mixing with the local lexicon to create fusions like Indian English or Jamaican English. He did add that there were times he came up with words in his native French and then translated them into English.

The meaning of pi

When asked about his fascination with the number pi, particularly given the phobia that surrounds maths, he said that he had come upon the number because of its irrationality. An irrational number is one that can't be expressed as a ratio of two integers and is not an imaginary one. 

He said: “Art takes the world and gives it order. It gives a method and structure to the world.”

Pi, he said, is a number, which like religion or faith or art is irrational. He added that a reader pointed out that Pi, the protagonist of his celebrated novel, was stuck at sea for exactly 227 days which incidentally is the fraction used to describe pi 22/7, a random tidbit he missed earliet.

Allegories in his work

Pinto observed that all of Martel’s works were layered with a deeper codex of meaning. To this, Martel remarked that it was the human condition to seek meaning.

He said: “We all seek meaning, philosophy suited my natural bend. Every book I have written is to understand issues. Life of Pi was to understand faith. Faith is a leap into the unknown. I specifically tried to understand the mechanism of faith. While cult is a negative thing, religion and faith is not.”

Fiction and non-fiction

He went on to observe that while history was forgotten, stories never were. He said that while he understood war, which is a normal human tendency, a genocide like the Holocaust was at times beyond reason.

He observed how Diary of Anne Franke still remained the central story about the Holocaust. Touching upon his work Beatrice and Virgil, he said he tried to explore the Holocaust with an allegory, from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Fiction, he observed has broader wings than non-fiction, stating that while we will always continue to read stories, history can be forgotten.

For the uninitiated, Beatrice and Virgil are Dante's guides to heaven. She takes over as a guide from Latin poet Virgil who can't enter heaven because he's a pagan.  

When asked how he chose his characters, he observed that Life of Pi was born due to the fact that he travelled through India. He said: “India nourished me. India taught me multiplicity, the diversity you see here in India is mind-blowing.”

Chancing upon a bearded, naked sadhu with a trident, he said it was a sight that one was unlikely to see in Canada. 

He added that his first novel would’ve been much different if he had travelled through a different country, like Switzerland.

Upcoming work

On his upcoming book on Homer’s epochal poem Iliad, he said it would have two parts. The top half would’ve fragments of antiquity and the bottom half would be someone trying to decipher it.

He said that the Greek society was based on myths of the Iliad and together with the Gospels were the fictional foundations upon which modern Western society was built.

The commoner speaks up

Interestingly, he observes Thersites the only commoner to have as speaking part in The Iliad besieged Agamemnon for forcing the people to wage his meaningless war on Troy and the futility of it all.

Martel observed that Thersites was, in contemporary Indian parlance, a Dalit but the only one who spoke sense. He said: “In the Iliad, all characters are bluebloods. The single ‘Dalit’ (used simply as a term to describe a commoner) Thersites questions the whole system.”

He observed that Thersites is immediately shut up by Odysseus who asked him to hold his tongue while speaking to his superiors and go back to his tent.

Attached below is the entire stanza from the Illiad:
Thersites says to Agamemnon

Son of Atreus, what thing further do you want, or find fault with
now? Your shelters are filled with bronze, there are plenty of the choicest
women for you within your shelter, whom we Achaians
give to you first of all whenever we capture some stronghold.
Or is it still more gold you will be wanting, that some son
of the Trojans, breakers of horses, brings as ransom out of Ilion,
one that I, or some other Achaian, capture and bring in?…
My good fools, poor abuses, you women, not men, of Achaia,
let us go back home in our ships, and leave this man here
by himself in Troy to mull his prizes of honour
that he may find out whether or not we others are helping him.
And now he has dishonoured Achilleus, a man much better
than he is. He has taken his prize by force and keeps her….’

So he spoke, Thersites, abusing Agamemnon
the shepherd of the people. But brilliant Odysseus swiftly
came beside him scowling and laid a harsh word upon him:
‘Fluent orator though you be, Thersites, your words are
ill-considered. Stop, nor stand up alone against princes.
Out of all those who came beneath Ilion with Atreides
I assert there is no worse man than you are. Therefore
you shall not lift up your mouth to argue with princes,
cast reproaches into their teeth, nor sustain the homegoing….’

Why Life of Pi?

When a questioner asked why the book was called Life of Pi, when only the period of the shipwreck was shown, he said that it was because at that time he started suffering, and one can only understand life through suffering. 

A sheepish Jerry Pinto pointed out that a clapping audience that perhaps they ought to remember they are clapping for suffering.

Coming back to his love for Indian English, he observed how we still tend to use words like bamboozle, a term which had become archaic in his native Canada. Describing his writer’s methodology, where he keeps a huge number of envelopes with notes, he said that his novel was like a painting, but he could see all the pieces.

He also expressed profound respect for the Guru-Shishya parampara observed in India, noting that a good teacher is of vital importance.

What are meerkats?

On the other hand, answering a piquant question about his choice of meerkats (on the deserted island) he chose them because they were cute and fluffy. He had pondered using mongoose – which are more well-known, but they were too aggressive for the purpose.