Editing Life of Pi (section)

=== Part one ===

In the 1960s, the narrator, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, grows up as the son of the manager of a zoo in [[Puducherry (city)|Pondicherry]]. While later recounting his life there, he offers insight on the antagonism of zoos and expresses his thoughts on why animals react less negatively than proponents of the idea suggest.

The narrator describes how he acquired his full name as a tribute to the [[Piscine Molitor|swimming pool in France]]. After schoolmates tease him by transforming his first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of his name as "[[Pi]]" when he starts secondary school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the [[transcendental number]] which is the ratio of the [[circumference]] of a circle to its diameter.

In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a {{convert|450|lb|kg|abbr=off|adj=on}} Bengal tiger at the zoo bears the name Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error which switched the tiger's name with the name of his human captor.<ref>Martel, p. 14.</ref>

One day, Pi and his older brother Ravi are given an impromptu lesson on the dangers of the animals kept at the zoo. It opens with a goat being fed to another tiger, followed by a family tour of the zoo, during which his father explains the aggressive biological features of each animal.

Pi is raised as a [[Hindu]] and practices vegetarianism. At the age of fourteen, he investigates [[Christianity]] and [[Islam]], and decides to become an adherent of all three religions, much to his parents' dismay (and his religious mentors' frustration), saying he "just wants to love God".<ref>Martel, p. 69.</ref> He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion, and comes to recognize benefits in each.

A few years later in February 1976, during the period when Indian Prime Minister [[Indira Gandhi]] declares "[[The Emergency (India)|The Emergency]]", Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and emigrate with his wife and sons to Canada.