Life of Pi ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a voyage to North America. Richard Parker is a royal Bengal tiger who is stranded on the lifeboat with Pi when the ship sinks. Richard Parker lives on the lifeboat with Pi and is kept alive with the food and water Pi delivers. Richard Parker develops a relationship with Pi that allows them to coexist in their struggle. In the novel, a hunter named Richard Parker is hired to kill a panther thought to have killed seven people within two months. Instead, he accidentally immobilizes a female Bengal tiger with
Life of Pi (film) Lee. In Canada, novelist Yann Martel meets Pi Patel; Martel has been told that Pi's life story would be a good subject for a book. Pi tells his story to Yann: Pi's father names him Piscine Molitor Patel after the swimming pool in France. In secondary school in Pondicherry, he adopts the name "Pi" (the Greek letter, ) to avoid the sound-alike nickname "Pissing Patel". He is raised in a Hindu family, but at 12 years old, is introduced to Christianity and then Islam, and decides to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God". His mother