My understanding of fear and hope.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you

Some sea creatures I discovered during the journey of life.

DOLPHINS

MASKED BOOBY

DORADO

WHALE

ALBATROSS 

SHORT-TAILED SHEAR WATER

It was a bright sunny day.I was chilling inside the tarpaulin.Suddenly, i woke up to a sudden blast.I opened my eyes and saw water in the sky which momentarily crashed down on me.It had an unpleasant smell.I looked over the edge of the boat and the first thing I saw was a large black object floating in the water.It was a whale.I saw a number of whales but none so close up as that first one.Apart from that,I also happened to encounter dolphins in a regular basis.The joy I got by beholding the beauty of the sea creatures was inexplicable.I saw many sea-faring birds.Twice I saw an albatross.I stared with my mouth open.They were something supernatural and incomprehensible.At last,i came across a short-tailed shearwater.I soon began hunting them.However,I had better luck with masked booby.Another delicious sea-creature was the Dorado fish.I seriously admit the fact that I would never in a million years think about killing those innocent sea-creatures if the circumstances had been in my control.

Sharks scared me to death!

• The horrifying shark I encountered in the sea

Today, I saw the biggest shark than any I have seen till now.It looked like a primeval monster which was about twenty feet long.It was most probably a tiger shark which was severely dangerous.All of a sudden it encircled our lifeboat.I feared it would attack but suddenly a fleeting thought came to my mind that if I can survive a tiger,then it won't necessarily be difficult for me survive this gigantic shark.Fortunately,it didn't attack.I think it was in search of its mate.It just left because it couldn't get one here since I was already with my mate-the one who takes the lion's share of the food I prepare,the one who I have been dragging along from Pondicherry,the one who unconsciously made a significant place in my heart.

The scarcity of fresh water prevails.

Rain on the sea

It was a very grueling task to collect the rain water because it always required me to be alert.I kept rain water and the water I collected form the solar stills in the locker,out of Richard Parker's sight, in three 50 liter plastic bags.My worst nightmare was that i would open the locker one morning and find that all three had spilled or had split.To evade such tragedy, I wrapped them in blankets to keep them as little as possible to reduce, wear and tear.I always added a little sea water to Richard parker's fresh water,in a greater proportion in the days following a rainfall,in a lesser during periods of drought.The scarcity of fresh water was the single most constant source of anxiety and suffering throughout our journey.

Cleaning up shit was undoubtedly the hardest part.

Richard parker's poop

Soon I got into the habit of cleaning up Richard Parker's shit.As soon as I became aware the he had had a bowel movement,I went about getting to it.It was very risky considering the fact that I had to reach out for his feces from the tarpaulin.Feces can be infected with parasites irrespective of the environment.So I needed to keep it clean from time to time.In a matter of weeks,Richard Parker became constipated and his bowel movements came no more than once in a month, so it was a relief from a sanitary point of view. Soon I became as constipated as Richard Parker.It was the result of our diet,too little water and too much protein.I realized that the first time Richard Parker relieved himself in the lifeboat, he tried to hide it from me.It was a sign of deference to me.I soon discovered that I have to give him the right signal.In order to do that, I had to hold his feces in my hand and roll them. Bringing them closer to my nose, I sniffed them and gave him a deprecatory gaze. By doing this, by badgering him with my eyes,and by giving that look of disgust caused by the pungent stench of his shit,I made it clear to him that it is my territory and I can do whatever I want.And it worked.Richard parker never summoned up the courage to stare me back.

At last I found some food!!

I was very hungry and agitated.When I touched my belly,it felt like a hard and hollow cavity.Somewhere deep inside me,I had a strong feeling that there is no cure for my misery.However,I had a very strange feeling about what lies under the tarpaulin.When I checked it with the risk of getting smashed by Richard parker, I found an open locker glistening with shiny new things.On a closer look, I noticed that it was full of foods.That moment of material revelation brought an intensity of pleasure-a mix of hope,surprise,disbelief,thrill,gratitude and luck.My eyes immediately fell upon what i was looking for-a carton full of drinking water.There were lots of foods and goodies in separate cartons.My feelings at that time can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.The satisfaction i got after having the delicious foods was ethereal. I felt as if I were hungry for several years.

The ship sank!

The ship sinks after making a sound like a monstrous metallic burp.Everything was screaming:the sea, the wind, my heart.In the midst of the havoc,I found myself in the lifeboat. When I looked around for Richard Parker,I found him in the water.He was drowning and urging me to save him.I helped him board the lifeboat.Panic-stricken I was when  I came to know that I have lost my parents in another boat.That moment was earth-shattering for me.I strongly feel that there had been an explosion which set us apart.Losing my family in such a terrible situation left me completely hopeless.I was left alone with a dying zebra,a notorious hyena,and a 450 pound Royal Bengal tiger.Out of frustration,I wanted to jump into the sea until i realized there are sharks in it.I tried to remember Vishnu,Jesus,and Mohammad.I started assuming how they would react to this situation.Truly, the feelings I got was speechless and divine and it helped me appreciate the bliss of the moment-the bliss of serenity.

Religion is about our dignity,not our depravity.

There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt.But choosing doubt in religion is worthy of choosing immobility for transportation.It didn't take me much long to realize the doubtless truth that accepting religion is the only way to love god.So,I confidently disregarded the idea of choosing only one religion and chose to explore every religion.Religion,at its entirety, is something to feel where the sun rises and your heart melts.To me, a sense of an omnipotent supernatural force is the prime component of any religion, irrespective of whatever religion you choose to practice.

Some confusion regarding nomenclature

I was named after a swimming pool called Piscine des tourelles.It was one of the greatest Olympic pools, inaugurated during the second Paris games of 1924.It was the crowning aquatic glory of Paris,indeed ,of the entire world.My family was very fascinated by the pool and they decided to name me after it.That is how i got my name when I entered this world,a last welcome addition to my family as Piscine molitor patel.

It was very hard for people to pronounce my name and it used to give me fits every now and then.I still remember my first day at St. Joseph secondary school in Pondicherry.When the teacher was taking attendance of the students by calling out their name,I was terribly nervous.No sooner was my name about to be called,than I got up from my desk and hurried to the blackboard.Before the teacher could say a word, I picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down the following,"My name is Piscine Molitor Patel known to all as Pi Patel."In order to make it easy for their good measure of understanding i added,"π=3.14."
Then I drew a large circle,which I sliced in two with a diameter to evoke that basic lesson of geometry.I repeated the stunt with every teacher.After a while,everyone became used  to my name and i couldn't ask anything more than that.My name has always been a constant cause of despair in my life.It was always a source of teasing by the other children and more than a few odd looks by the teachers and parents.So eventually,in an attempt to fit in, I used those maneuvers to get rid of the trauma.I wish my parents had named me after an animal like wolf or tiger instead of a swimming pool.It could have metamorphosed the dismal picture of my life.

My understanding of the wild.

Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.Animals are territorial.That is the key to their minds.They want outsiders to maintain a flight distance—the minimum distance at which an animal will tolerate a potential predator or enemy.They don't necessarily yearn for freedom as long as their territories are not being invaded.They are very vulnerable to changes.Even the smallest changes can upset them.They are conservative,as well as reactionary when it comes to defend their territories Because only a familiar territory will allow them to fulfill the two relentless imperatives of the wild:the avoidance of enemies and the getting of food and water.They have some tactful techniques to enlighten other animals on their territorial spans.For instance,they use urine to inform others about their territory so that they can discern it whenever they come near to it.Under such conditions of diplomatic peace,all animals are content and comfortable both in zoo and wild.


My friend, Richard parker, was no different from it.