Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Contents
Chapter Seven
Overview
Pi recalls his biology teacher, Mr. Satish Kumar, a Communist atheist who treats the zoo as a scientific "temple" and sees animals as evidence of rational order. During a conversation at the rhino pit, Mr. Kumar bluntly rejects religion, crediting medicine and reason—not God—for saving him from polio and insisting humans must create justice themselves.
Pi is shaken but remains drawn to Mr. Kumar, later recognizing atheism as its own kind of faith and identifying agnosticism, not disbelief, as the real spiritual dead end. The encounter cements Mr. Kumar’s influence on Pi’s later choice to study zoology.
Summary
Pi describes having a few teachers who "lit a match" in him, especially Mr. Satish Kumar, his biology teacher at Petit S1minaire. Mr. Kumar is an active Communist and an avowed atheist, with a distinctive triangular, top-heavy appearance and an unexpectedly friendly smile.
Pi realizes Mr. Kumar’9s atheism not in class but at the Pondicherry Zoo, where Mr. Kumar visits like a ritual devotee, reading every label and treating each animal as proof of scientific order. To Mr. Kumar, nature is a perfectly logical system, and the zoo is where he goes to "take the pulse of the universe" and leave feeling refreshed by reason.
Pi first watches Mr. Kumar from a distance at the rhinoceros pit, where the zoo’s two Indian rhinos, Peak and Summit, live among goats. Pi explains that the goat arrangement began as Pi’s father’s practical solution to keep Peak from suffering isolation; it worked so well that the rhinos and goats became inseparable and a public attraction.
Mr. Kumar calls the zoo his "temple" and jokes that politicians should be more like the cooperative rhinos and goats, then criticizes the prime minister. Trying to respond, Pi says religion will save the country, but Mr. Kumar replies that he does not believe in religion and calls it darkness, insisting there is no need to go beyond scientific explanation and that God does not exist.
Mr. Kumar explains his conviction through his own past: as a boy with polio, he repeatedly asked where God was, and no help came; medicine and human action saved him. He frames reason as his prophet, death as final, and social justice as something people must create by taking control of the means of production. Pi stays quiet, fearing Mr. Kumar’s words could damage what Pi loves, but Mr. Kumar leaves warmly, reminds Pi about a Tuesday test, and calls him "3.14." Pi concludes that Mr. Kumar became his favourite teacher and helped lead him to study zoology in Toronto, and Pi reflects that atheists, like believers, ultimately make a leap of faith, while agnosticism is the paralyzing choice to remain in doubt.
Who Appears
- Pi PatelNarrator as a student; meets Mr. Kumar at the zoo and reflects on faith, doubt, and atheism.
- Mr. Satish KumarPi’s biology teacher; Communist atheist who reveres scientific order and rejects religion after surviving polio.
- PeakYoung male Indian rhinoceros; paired with goats to ease isolation, becoming a popular zoo attraction.
- SummitSecond Indian rhinoceros; joins Peak and the goats in the shared enclosure.
- Pi's fatherZoo administrator who devises the rhino-and-goat arrangement to protect Peak’s health.
- Pi's motherMentioned as sharing complaints about Mrs. Gandhi, reflecting the family’s political grumbling.
- Mrs. GandhiIndia’s prime minister, criticized indirectly in Mr. Kumar’s political remarks.