Pi reflects on why people uproot their lives, concluding they move in hopes of something better and to escape relentless anxiety. He notes that during India’s troubled mid-1970s, political tensions increasingly weighed on his father, even though Pi himself remained absorbed by the steady, apolitical rhythms of the zoo.

Pi describes how Indira Gandhi’s Emergency felt distant to him but not to his father, who tracked events through newspapers and conversations with Mother and Mamaji. When Delhi brought down the Tamil Nadu government in February 1976—an act Pi frames as part of a broader suspension of constitutional norms—Pi’s father sees it as the final proof of a dictatorial takeover.

Alarmed about what such politics could mean for a precarious, not-very-profitable zoo business, Pi’s father fears arbitrary interference and ruin. Pi explains that a zoo depends on stable democratic institutions and rule of law to function, and that his father’s worry is rooted in the sense that hard work can be undone overnight and that the future may be blocked, especially for one’s children.

As a result of this mounting dread, Pi’s father decides the family must leave India. Mother agrees, and the plan becomes a sudden, decisive bolt rather than a gradual consideration.

At dinner one evening, the parents announce the destination: Canada. Pi and Ravi are stunned, because Canada is so remote and unimaginable to them that it feels like a place with no meaning at all—far beyond even nearby regions and countries they already perceive as alien.