Pi Patel repeatedly thinks he sees a distant light at night and responds by firing his rocket flares, then his hand flares after the rockets run out. Each attempt ends with no rescue, leaving Pi with the repeated pain of hope raised and dashed.

As the failures accumulate, Pi calculates how limited his visibility is from so low on the water and how unlikely it is for a ship to cross close enough to notice him. Pi concludes that rescue by people is too uncertain to rely on and shifts his goal decisively: survival depends on reaching solid land.

After firing, Pi notices the spent hand-flare shells smell exactly like cumin. The scent intoxicates him and triggers an intense, almost hallucinatory rush of memory in which Pondicherry feels vividly present, offering brief relief from disappointment; afterward, cumin becomes linked in Pi’s mind to the Pacific.

Richard Parker reacts strongly whenever a hand flare ignites, freezing and staring with tiny pupils at the bright light. Pi can barely look at the flare’s blinding center and waves it at arm’s length while heat showers his forearm; in the flare’s strange illumination, the water around the raft, previously black, is revealed to be crowded with fish.