School-wide book club aims to build community
By Karen Aney (Contributer) – Email
On March 29, the Centre for Indo Canadian Studies and the English Department will be holding the Ehsaas South Asian Readers and Writers Festival. This event is part of the Centennial anniversary of the National Historic Site Gur Sikh Temple in Abbotsford. It is open to students, staff, and the community as a whole. The Festival will host three authors: Tariq Malik, Gurjinder Basran, and Anosh Irani, who is headlining the event.
There is currently an attempt to form one huge book club throughout UFV. The idea is to get as many students and staff as possible to read Irani’s newest book, Dahanu Road, before the event. They will then be able to discuss the piece at the reading, which will be held on the 29th at 7 p.m. in B101 on Abbotsford campus. Similar events have been rather poorly attended by the student body; at the risk of losing such important contributions to the university’s atmosphere, students are encouraged to participate while they still can.
Dahanu Road, named for a city near Bombay, is available in the bookstore on Abbotsford campus and online via Amazon or Chapters. In the novel, Irani uses rich imagery to depict the setting, no doubt inspired by his childhood near Dahanu. The storyline in essence is rather simplistic; rich son falls for servant daughter, things go right, things go wrong, and then the book ends on a definitively happy or sad note. What makes the novel special is its expressive narrative. Poetic descriptions of landscape are adequate even for readers who have never visited India, and the accuracy with which Irani describes the dynamics of slavery are culturally educational. It’s a fairly easy read – and not the kind of ‘easy’ that your teacher gives you two days to read and report on, the real kind that you can get through in a long weekend or in between classes.
The concept of the book club is interesting, especially given the subtext of class issues in the novel. These aren’t easy ideas to conceptualize, and they’re a large part of Indian cultural history. This makes the novel a perfect choice for this club and this event; the base of the book rests on Indian culture, and this reading is to celebrate the Historic Sikh temple – by extension, it’s a celebration of the prevalence of South Asian influence in Abbotsford society.
Sharanjit Sandhra is the coordinator of the B.C. Regional Innovation Chair in Canada India Business and Economic Development, out of the Centre for Indo Canadian Studies. As one of the organizers of this event, she has been marketing it to a few external media outlets (including OMNI TV). While neither the reading nor the book club have been widely publicized to date, this push may alert more students and community members to its existence and result in greater attendance. If for no other reason than having the opportunity to talk about a book without having to write an essay on it, check this book out and attend the Ehsaas South Asian Readers and Writers Festival.
If you have any questions regarding the event or the book club, feel free to contact Sharanjit at Sharanjit.Sandhra@ufv.ca.
