Lead in Literature – Life of Pi

Author: Yann Martel

Published 2002 by Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House of Canada

Page 9

“The day I came of swimming age, which to Mother's distress, Mamaji claimed was seven, he brought me down to the beach, spread his arms seaward and said, "This is my gift to you.”…

When he felt that I had progressed sufficiently, we turned our backs on the laughing and the shouting, the running and the splashing, the blue-green waves and the bubbly surf, and headed for the proper rectangularity and the formal flatness (and the paying admission) of the ashram swimming pool.

I went with him three times a week throughout my childhood, a Monday, Wednesday, Friday early morning ritual with the clockwork regularity of a good front-crawl stroke....

Swimming instruction, which in time became swimming practice, was gruelling, but there was the deep pleasure of doing a stroke with increasing ease and speed, over and over, till hypnosis practically, the water turning from molten lead to liquid light....

Beyond the activity of swimming, there was the talk of it. It was the talk that Father loved....

Swim lore was his vacation talk from the workday talk of running a zoo. Water without a hippopotamus was so much more manageable than water with one."