Its been well over a month since I wrote last and before I get into the well of procrastination, let me jot down something. But suddenly why today? To be honest, I was watching TV over the weekend and Discovery and NGC had special programmes lined up for the World Environment Day. It rung some bells, and here I am, back to the blog, after glancing over last year's post about the day.
Speaking of Discovery channel and their programs about tigers and all, recently I happened to read the book "Life of Pi", the book is about a boy and a tiger, both stuck on a life boat in the middle of the Pacific for close to six months, imagine that! While the story itself is gripping and narrated in a very imaginative way, the book has some very good thoughts related to religion as well, a completely tangential topic. And the protagonist happens to major in Zoology and Religious studies. A unique combination! I wonder how he would've answered the age-old question about Evolution :) Probably that would tell which of his majors his favorite is!
And the book is set in India in the 1970s. Not having read too many books set in the Indian background, I found this book fresh and real. The familiar names and places, the description of the huge tamarind tree and kids playing under its shade, the earthenware to cool water and such minute things made it a pleasurable reading experience and the imaginary world one constructs while reading a book felt very real. Not so much with the books set in some foreign contexts.
Probably I should read more such books.. but how would I know. One classic mistake I did when I first came across this book a few years back was to dismiss it as some kind of self-help book. The words "Life" and an unknown/mathematical-constant "Pi" made me assume it is not my type of a book. But once I got to know that it is not, I started reading and found the title very simple and very apt to the story.
So, moral of the story: don't second guess what a book is about just by looking at the title :-)
