Life of Pi (film) family, but a crewman throws him into a lifeboat. A freed zebra jumps onto the boat with him, breaking its leg. The ship sinks into the Mariana Trench drowning his family. Pi briefly sees what appears to be a survivor, but it turns out to be Richard Parker. After the storm, Pi awakens in the lifeboat with the zebra, and is joined by a resourceful orangutan. A spotted hyena emerges from under a tarpaulin covering half of the lifeboat and snaps at Pi, forcing him to retreat to the end of the boat. The hyena kills the zebra and later
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