Feature

Star Campus-Coffee World
Literary Adda

Yamin Tauseef Jahangir

BOOKS have always been considered a good company and nothing beats a good moment if the paperback is interesting and it drags you into the core of the climax. You can go on spending hours munching and sipping on the espresso while you allow your imagination to grow and create a certain space in your mind. Some stories at times make an impact in our heart and that becomes our favourite. Star Campus literary adda is the event where we get to know about such books and with the help of Coffee World the ambience is always fantastic. The guest of the evening was Faria Tofail, Assistant Professor, Department of English of East West University. The Star Campus literary adda was held on June 6 at Coffee World, located in Banani. Faria Tofail and her daughter graced the event by their presence and there we all got to know about a book that had been a personal favourite of the guest.

Photo: Ranak Martin

The name of the book was The Blind Assassin written by Margaret Atwood. The book is an award-winning novel and it is a best seller. The book won the Booker and Hammet Prize in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Apart from this, it got nominated for Orange Prize in fiction and IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2002. Times Magazine named the book as the best novel of 2000 and it got listed in the 100 greatest English novels since 1923. Faria Tofail started off with the author's biography where she termed Margaret Atwood as a versatile writer. The author is a Canadian and is mostly popular as a novelist. She is also an award winning poet, critic, essayist, feminist and a social campaigner.

The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga in Toronto of the 1930s and 1940s. It covers the time of the First World War till the 1990s. The story revolves around two sisters, Iris and Laura, who were the heiress to a dying industrial empire. The story is entirely narrated by Iris but the novel also has a story of Iris's sister Laura in it, where she falls in love with a pulp fiction writer named Alex Thomas. 'The Blind Assasin' is Laura's novel that Iris publishes later on which has made her to be a rebel figure for the young. Thus the two stories run parallel, complementing each other. The novel begins with the reminiscence of Iris who is an 80 year old lady and she narrates about the day when Laura committed suicide at the age of 25. Iris describes her feelings on receiving the news and her discovery of Laura's notebooks, which were supposedly the manuscript of the novel.

The novel then goes through a roller-coaster ride with the incidents shuttling back and forth from the past to the present, while Iris try to make a meaning out of her tragedies of life. She also reminisce her faults and her share of responsibilities in Laura's suicide. The story also talks about the childhood of the two sisters and how they grew up after their mother's demise, when the father was almost absent in the scene. Iris was given the huge responsibility to take care of Laura as well as her father's empire from a very early age.

“Her parents' expectation and love swung like the dead albatross in the Ancient Mariner's neck in Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, said Faria Tofail. “This leads to Iris's self sacrifice in the form of a marriage to Richard Griffin, a man older than her, and who happens to be her father's rival and a politician,” she added. As the story progresses, Laura gets a nervous breakdown and goes to a mental asylum. The marriage with Richard does not last long and Iris gets a divorce. The only bright point of Iris's life is her extramarital affair with Alex Thomas who turns out to be the hero of Laura's novel.

However, in the end we come to know that Laura's novel is actually written by Iris herself. Now the question remains, what was written in the notebooks that Laura left in her drawers before she died. According to Faria Tofail, it takes Iris almost 498 pages to come back to the notebooks she discovered earlier. “What knowledge Iris chose to know can only be found out once you read the book,” said Faria Tofail.

“The Blind Assasin has been criticized for its complex plotline,” Faria Tofail said it with a smile, “and personally I found the novel quite intriguing.” In her depiction of a triangular compelling love-story Atwood's prose reads like poetry. The truth is gradually revealed in the finale and keeps the reader to remain bewildered. When asked about her favourite dialogue our guest read few lines from the novel which says, “But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling”. Losing Laura was so much painful for Iris and she does not know where it hurts because it hurts everywhere all the time. To our guest of the evening, reading through The Blind Assasin was like taking a journey from innocence to experience.

Giggles

Last Request
Cannibals capture three men. The men are told that they will be skinned and eaten and then their skin will be used to make canoes. Then they are each given a final request. The first man asks to be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible. His request is granted, and they poison him. The second man asks for paper and a pen so that he can write a farewell letter to his family. This request is granted, and after he writes his letter, they kill him saving his skin for their canoes. Now it is the third man's turn. He asks for a fork. The cannibals are confused, but it is his final request, so they give him a fork. As soon as he has the fork he begins stabbing himself all over and shouts, "To hell with your canoes!"

Dead or alive
Once Santa Singh, the psychiatrist, met a friend and exclaimed, "I heard you are dead." But you see I'm alive, smiled the friend. Impossible, said Santa Singh. The man who told me is much more reliable than you.

Ex-Girlfriend and Celebrating
A husband is sitting with his wife at his 65th high school reunion. The husband kept staring at a drunken lady swigging a case of Miller Lite. The wife was getting jealous that her husband was staring at the lady instead of her. So she demanded "Do you know her!?!". "Yes" said the husband calmy. "She's an ex-girlfriend of mine. We split up when we were in 11th grade. And I heard she hasn't been sober since." he said. "My God!" said the wife. "Who would think that someone could go that long celebrating?"

Suicide
A blonde decides to commit suicide by hanging herself so she goes to the park and....2 days later a man is walking in the park and sees the blonde hanging on by a rope tied to her stomach. So he says "Ain't that supposed to be around your neck". And the blonde says "I tried that, but I couldn't breathe.

Stranded desert
A blonde a brunette and a red head are stranded on an island. There happens to be a magic mirror on the island. and if you tell the truth you get to escape from the island and if you tell a lie you vanish! so the brunette gets up there and says "I think im pretty"... she vanishes! the red head goes up and says "I think im pretty"... she vanishes too! the blonde goes up and says "I think"... she vanishes.