Life of Pi

Addy finds it hard to publish things in a public blog for the world to read. Therefore, I've taken it upon myself to invade her privacy and generally embarass her by snipping this out of her last e-mail. That's what Dad's are for.

My post-colonial women's lit class teacher, Professor Kalpana, invited us over to her house the other night. We had a delicious dinner out on the terrace. We sat and talked for hours. She started talking about her son. I think she said that his name was Patel (or something like that). We found out that he is about our age and studying abroad right now. My friend Keri mentioned that Patel was the name of the main character of a book. My professor smiled. Then her husband said, "Kalpana, what is the name of that book whose main character was named after Patel?" "Life of Pi."-replied Kalpana."What!?" we all exclaimed, "The main character of Life of Pi was named after your son!?" "Yes, the author stayed with us for a few weeks while he was in Pondicherry,"Kalpana told us nonchalantly. "Oh my God! That was my favorite book when I was younger!" I told her."Really? I met the author at a conference in Canada and he mentioned he was writing a book set in South India. I told him he could visit me in Pondicherry. Then a few months later while I was on the train from Chennai to Pondicherry, I saw him again and invited him to my house. He got on really well with my son and they spent a couple of days biking around Pondicherry together. So he named the main character after him. He also really liked our hyper-active dog so he ended up putting the dog in the book as well. He told us that he would put us in the acknowledgements but he never did."By that time I pretty much freaked out! I couldn't believe the author of the Life of Pi got his inspiration in the very house where I was eating dinner. Even more, I couldn't believe that my favorite professor, whom I had developed a rather close relationship with, actually knew the man! All I could think was, "Wow, Breanna is going to be so jealous when she finds this out".