Was the Zoo in Life of Pi fact or fiction?

The Oscar winning movie Life of Pi has been able to touch the lives of millions of its viewers,
in simple and subtle ways. The simplicity of the location, background, characters and story has had profound impact. Even though it is a fiction, you can’t help but make attempts to find its realistic connections. When one visits Pondicherry and has watched the movie at the same time, the image of the toy train, or the Joy train that connects two stations in the zoo of the movie gnaws in your memory. In our attempt to find fact within the fiction, we wonder, was there a zoo at all?

Our curiosity led us to the Great East Coast Road Drive where at the southern end of the crook of Goubert Avenue, we asked for Botanical gardens. Our search around the less picturesque seaside avenues which was crowded by semi urban dwellings and unpleasant signboards finally led us to the gate of the botanical gardens which was not very exciting. We did hear a train whistle when we reached there but it was from the nearby railway station and not the Joy train in the movie.

As we entered inside the garden we were greeted with a sparse crowd, mostly a bunch of school boys who were playing among the broken concrete benches, making an attempt to spend the long day ahead. A rat-snake, mating red bugs pulling each other in opposite directions were some of the first animals to greet us. Neglect and the lax attitude of the administration were evident in the environment of the garden. Unwelcoming gates, potholed pathways, rustic ancient trees which had survived all the years of apathy, untrimmed lawns etc. were common sight all around. Large fruit bats dangling from their bedraggled canopies were filling the air with their screeching noise.

Lovers who had been in the garden before us had left a mark for us to remember their visit with their names inscribed on the trees. Some of these trees with their huge buttress roots could probably be older than our whole generations. These huge wonders of nature, with their roots firmly entrenched in the ground tells us about the hundreds of years that has passed by us. Placards placed around the garden inform us that the trees were planted by the French administrator in the 1740’s. However official records mention the actual date of the garden’s establishment to be 1826.

Our search for the zoo led us to disappointment as we did not find one in the garden. All we found was garden of plants and snakes, bats and bugs in the name of animals. The narrow railway track and the ‘Fern Hill’ station, with polished track did give us a hope of finding a train atleast. To our pleasant surprise we did find a dinky blue locomotive with a chain of coaches painted in varied Disney characters running along the tracks. Thus our experience was not totally disconnected between the thread of fact and fiction.