Pi recalls how Pondicherry joined the Union of India in 1954, and how civic pride helped create the Pondicherry Zoo on land made available from the Botanical Garden. Pi evokes the zoo’s hot, humid brightness and the way it surprises visitors with sudden encounters—giraffes, monkeys, birds, rhinoceroses, elephants, and hippopotamuses—turning the place into “Zootown.”

Pi explains that before Pondicherry, Pi’s father ran a large hotel in Madras, but his long-standing interest in animals led him into the zoo business. Pi compares zookeeping to a hotelkeeper’s worst nightmare: the “guests” never leave, demand constant care and cleaning, are particular about diet, attract unruly visitors, and create endless management problems. Despite the headaches, the zoo becomes Mr. Santosh Patel’s major undertaking.

For Pi, the zoo is “paradise on earth,” and Pi describes childhood routines shaped by animal life. Lions serve as an alarm clock at dawn; breakfast and school departures are surrounded by calls, shrieks, and sightings of birds, primates, bats, reptiles, and large mammals. Pi’s daily walk past enclosures becomes a sequence of ordinary-but-unforgettable impressions that feel like princely privilege.

After school, Pi spends time close enough for animals to interact gently—an elephant searching clothing for treats, an orang-utan combing hair for “tick snacks.” Pi emphasizes how hard it is for language to capture the perfection of animal movement and presence, urging the reader to imagine it instead.

The chapter then shifts into Pi’s reflections on zoos themselves. Pi challenges the common belief that wild animals are “happy” because they are “free,” arguing that wild life is defined by fear, hunger, hierarchy, parasites, and territorial constraint. Pi asserts that animals are deeply conservative and territorial, and that a biologically sound enclosure functions as a workable territory that fulfills needs; in this view, “freedom” is an illusion humans project. Pi notes examples of animals that could escape but do not, and closes by admitting Pi is not trying to “defend” zoos; the Pondicherry Zoo is gone now, existing only in Pi’s memory, and Pi links the controversy around zoos to similar misunderstandings about religion.