Proceedings of the October meet

Here are the minutes from the October meet, kind courtesy Mr. Surendra Kaushik:

Meeting of the Literature club held on Sunday, the 11th October 2009 at the residence of Mrs and Mr Merchant at Nigdi.

The topics of this meet are :-
Varied perspectives of a character / or situation ;
Synergy between literature and advertisements ;

Mr Kaushik was asked to moderate the session.

He then spoke about the shades of the character Fagin from the Dickens novel `Oliver Twist`. A character known to be a miser and became a symbol of anti-semitism. He ran a school for scoundrels training young boys in the fine art of thievery. A person living in the midst of shanty town. And yet, Fagin had a kind heart towards his boys, He looked at them in a fatherly way. Fagin’s desire to marry when well late in his age, but the fear of what a wife would do and spend his money, made him retract several times. All in all an adorable character although a villain!

The second speaker was Ms Renuka Vijayraghavan. She spoke about various perspectives of life and longings that bring a plethora of shades in a character at different times and climes. The transference of love on a Panda toy shows the loving tenderness of a character be it a kid or an adult. Any action is subject to evaluation. It is an interplay of all colors in a character that goes into the anatomy of a character perspective.

Mrs Merchant drew the attention to the well known novel 'To kill a mocking bird'. The view of a child, the subtlety of the character etched in many lights.

Mr Rajagopalan spoke of the psychological handling in and of a character. Those who are endearing to women and their problems show a sensibility to life.

Ms Shama spoke on Synergy between literature and advertisements. Synergy is a bloodline in literature. The gamut of people with specialised skills like copywriters, editiors , etc who bring out the essence of literature in advertisements. A mere caption can explain a lot more than a thousand words. She gave the example of `thanda` which is a common word but has become synonymous to a soft drink.

Mr Rajagopalan spoke of sloganeering in advertisements and gave examples from Tamil literature. Another famous line he quoted was ` Where the Dickens is Charles? !
Ideas are sold through advertisements. Brevity is made into a fine art.

Ms Renuka spoke of disassociating advertisements from products. And cited a humourous ad about husbands killing their wives for insurance.

The session ended with a hearty lunch courtesy Mrs and Mr Merchant.