“Salaam alaykum, Mr. Kumar! How good to see you.”
“Wa alaykum as-salaam. Is something wrong with your eyes?”
“No, nothing. Just a bit of dust.”
“They look quite red.”
“It’s nothing.”
He headed for the ticket booth but I called him back.
“No, no. Not for you, master.”
It was with pride that I waved the ticket collector’s hand away and showed Mr. Kumar into the zoo.
He marvelled at everything, at how to tall trees came tall giraffes, how carnivores were supplied with herbivores and herbivores with grass, how some creatures crowded the day and others the night, how some that needed sharp beaks had sharp beaks and others that needed limber limbs had limber limbs. It made me happy that he was so impressed.
He quoted from the Holy Qur’an: “In all this there are messages indeed for a people who use their reason.”
We came to the zebras. Mr. Kumar had never heard of such creatures, let alone seen one. He was dumbfounded.
“They’re called zebras,” I said.
“Have they been painted with a brush?”
“No, no. They look like that naturally.”
“What happens when it rains?”
“Nothing.”
“The stripes don’t melt?”
“No.”
I had brought some carrots. There was one left, a large and sturdy specimen. I took it out of the bag. At that moment I heard a slight scraping of gravel to my right. It was Mr. Kumar, coming up to the railing in his usual limping and rolling gait.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello, Pi.”
The baker, a shy but dignified man, nodded at the teacher, who nodded back.
An alert zebra had noticed my carrot and had come up to the low fence. It twitched its ears and stamped the ground softly. I broke the carrot in two and gave one half to Mr. Kumar and one half to Mr. Kumar. “Thank you, Piscine,” said one; “Thank you, Pi,” said the other. Mr. Kumar went first, dipping his hand over the fence. The zebra’s thick, strong, black lips grasped the carrot eagerly. Mr. Kumar wouldn’t let go. The zebra sank its teeth into the carrot and snapped it in two. It crunched loudly on the treat for a few seconds, then reached for the remaining piece, lips flowing over Mr. Kumar’s fingertips. He released the carrot and touched the zebra’s soft nose.
It was Mr. Kumar’s turn. He wasn’t so demanding of the zebra. Once it had his half of the carrot between its lips, he let go. The lips hurriedly moved the carrot into the mouth.
Mr. and Mr. Kumar looked delighted. “A zebra, you say?” said Mr. Kumar.
“That’s right,” I replied. “It belongs to the same family as the ass and the horse.”
“The Rolls-Royce of equids,” said Mr. Kumar.
“What a wondrous creature,” said Mr. Kumar.
“This one’s a Grant’s zebra,” I said.
Mr. Kumar said, “Equus burchelli boehmi.”
Mr. Kumar said, “Allahu akbar.”
I said, “It’s very pretty.”
We looked on.
Chapter 32
There are many examples of animals coming to surprising living arrangements. All are instances of that animal equivalent of anthropomorphism: zoomorphism, where an animal takes a human being, or another animal, to be one of its kind.
The most famous case is also the most common: the pet dog, which has so assimilated humans into the realm of doghood as to want to mate with them, a fact that any dog owner who has had to pull an amorous dog from the leg of a mortified visitor will confirm.
Our golden agouti and spotted paca got along very well, conentedly huddling together and sleeping against each other until the first was stolen.
I have already mentioned our rhinoceros-and-goat herd, and the case of circus lions.
There are confirmed stories of drowning sailors being pushed up to the surface of the water and held there by dolphins, a characteristic way in which these marine mammals help each other.
A case is mentioned in the literature of a stoat and a rat living in a companion relationship, while other rats presented to the stoat were devoured by it in the typical way of stoats.
We had our own case of the freak suspension of the predator-prey relationship. We had a mouse that lived for several weeks with the vipers. While other mice dropped in the terrarium disappeared within two days, this little brown Methuselah built itself a nest, stored the grains we gave it in various hideaways and scampered about in plain sight of the snakes. We were amazed. We put up a sign to bring the mouse to the public’s attention. It finally met its end in a curious way: a young viper bit it. Was the viper unaware of the mouse’s special status? Unsocialized to it, perhaps? Whatever the case, the mouse was bitten by a young viper but devoured-and immediately-by an adult. If there was a spell, it was broken by the young one. Things returned to normal after that. All mice disappeared down the vipers’ gullets at the usual rate.
In the trade, dogs are sometimes used as foster mothers for lion cubs. Though the cubs grow to become larger than their caregiver, and far more dangerous, they never give their mother trouble and she never loses her placid behaviour or her sense of authority over her litter. Signs have to be put up to explain to the public that the dog is not live food left for the lions (just as we had to put up a sign pointing out that rhinoceros are herbivores and do not eat goats).
What could be the explanation for zoomorphism? Can’t a rhinoceros distinguish big from small, tough hide from soft fur? Isn’t it plain to a dolphin what a dolphin is like? I believe the answer lies in something I mentioned earlier, that measure of madness that moves life in strange but saving ways. The golden agouti, like the rhinoceros, was in need of companionship. The circus lions don’t care to know that their leader is a weakling human; the fiction guarantees their social well-being and staves off violent anarchy. As for the lion cubs, they would positively keel over with fright if they knew their mother was a dog, for that would mean they were motherless, the absolute worst condition imaginable for any young, warm-blooded life. I’m sure even the adult viper, as it swallowed the mouse, must have felt somewhere in its undeveloped mind a twinge of regret, a feeling that something greater was just missed, an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude reality of a reptile.
Chapter 33
He shows me family memorabilia. Wedding photos first. A Hindu wedding with Canada prominently on the edges. A younger him, a younger her. They went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Had a lovely time. Smiles to prove it. We move back in time. Photos from his student days at U of T: with friends; in front of St. Mike’s; in his room; during Diwali on Gerrard Street; reading at St. Basil’s Church dressed in a white gown; wearing another kind of white gown in a lab of the zoology department; on graduation day. A smile every time, but his eyes tell another story.
Photos from Brazil, with plenty of three-toed sloths in situ.
With a turn of a page we jump over the Pacific-and there is next to nothing. He tells me that the camera did click regularly-on all the usual important occasions-but everything was lost. What little there is consists of what was assembled by Mamaji and mailed over after the events.
There is a photo taken at the zoo during the visit of a V.I.P. In black and white another world is revealed to me. The photo is crowded with people. A Union cabinet minister is the focus of attention. There’s a giraffe in the background. Near the edge of the group, I recognize a younger Mr. Adirubasamy.
“Mamaji?” I ask, pointing.
“Yes,” he says.
There’s a man next to the minister, with horn-rimmed glasses and hair very cleanly combed. He looks like a plausible Mr. Patel, face rounder than his son’s.
“Is this your father?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know who that is.”
There’s a pause of a few seconds. He says, “It’s my father who took the picture.”
On the same page there’s another group shot, mostly of schoolchildren. He taps the photo.
“That’s Richard Parker,” he says.
I’m amazed. I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance. Unfortunately, it’s black and white again and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn’t even realize that his picture is being taken.
The opposing page is entirely taken up by a colour photo of the swimming pool of the Aurobindo Ashram. It’s a nice big outdoor pool with clear, sparkling water, a clean blue bottom and an attached diving pool.
The next page features a photo of the front gate of Petit Seminaire school An arch has the school’s motto painted on it: Nil magnum nisi bonum. No greatness without goodness.
And that’s it. An entire childhood memorialized in four nearly irrelevant photographs.
He grows sombre.
“The worst of it,” he says, “is that I can hardly remember what my mother looks like any more. I can see her in my mind, but it’s fleeting. As soon as I try to have a good look at her, she fades. It’s the same with her voice. If I saw her again in the street, it would all come back. But that’s not likely to happen. It’s very sad not to remember what your mother looks like.”
He closes the book.