The day was normal. The usual peak hour London rush. Holborn station was a mad rush this morning. The tube was more crowded than the usual. I had a book to keep me company. Lord of the files. Time flew, my eyes kept getting heavy from the drowsiness. With Ralph and Jack picking on poor little piggy, SNORE and a YAWN! The plot is yet to thicken.
A slow crawl towards the station’s exit and it was then I noticed the familiar bird of red. The phoenix. THE Phoenix, if you know what I mean. Doodled were the lines, Celebrating 20 years of wizardry! It took me a while to soak in the information. Has it really been twenty years? There are so many folks out there who aren’t even 20 yet. I let the information slip into my things to remember and wonder about repository and went about the actions for the day.
I checked. And yes, it’s been 20 already. That’s two decades and I saw the last 20 years of my life flash back. Since we are talking Potter, I’ll tie the memories around them.
I’ve never really enjoyed the Potter mania. I hated the world even before I had bothered reading any of the works. It was a simple choice. Everybody seemed to enjoy Harry Potter and it was easy to not like it. Stand out in the crowd, be a misfit and frankly, I wasn’t reading much anyways , back then. And just like that, I became a Potter hater. I wouldn’t read , exactly the same treatment that I gave to rest of the authors of the world. In time, in pursuit of staying in that character, I found ample reasons to justify the disgust. A lot later, I didn’t matter and my opinions didn’t matter. The world was doing quite well , all by itself. It didn’t need my profound judgement.
My first tryst with Harry potter came in the year 2000 something. I was in love. She was in love, with potter. The chamber of secrets had been opened, and the usual theatre , Sathyam, had a show going in. With the birthday around the corner, I had managed to save a bit of money and book the tickets. When you are a student and jobless, money is scarce. Not really. I wont play that card. I asked dad and only had to lie about the ‘Friends’ with whom I was going to watch the movie. Good times indeed. No guilt, not then and wont ever be now 🙂
I remember my ignorance and my status as an outsider when everybody in the movie exactly knew how that story was going to play itself out. It was a complete surprise to me. Back then, I didn’t care much a about the movie. It was a good birthday present. The smiles meant a lot more than wizards and wands. That was it.
In retrospect, I think the chamber of secrets is one of the better made Potter movies ever. Rest of them are hopelessly boring.
As the relationship turned south, so did my bond and ties with Potter. FREEDOM at last from the boy who lived. He didn’t have to live in my world from then on. Potter and I remained distinctly divorced for a while. Until the one about the order of the phoenix that is. That’s around , give or take, four years? That was an ample time to heal and brace myself for a fresh new impact and shatter something taped together, all over again. Ah the fun fortitude that is life.
New love, new love for Potter and that meant I had to play along. And play along I did. I remember reading the Order. Not that I enjoyed it. I didn’t dislike it though. And for a while , Potter and I managed to coexist peacefully. I’d still bicker and whine about him. Potter would whine quite well, all by himself on the big screen. Together, we whined into a hate-tolerate friendship.
Order changed things. This time around, the lady had branded me a villager and an illiterate for shunning books. I had to impress and hence embarked on a journey of words. I didn’t reach out to Potter. I reached out to John Grisham instead. There was a point in time, maybe it’s relevant today as well, where folks would walk up to me and proudly proclaim themselves to be voracious readers. ‘I’ve read alllllllllllllllllllllllllll the Harry Potter books’, they’d gleefully explain. ‘Sweet’, has always been my condescending , sarcastic response. Truth was, I never thought Potter was literature. Now that I’m pretending to be an adult these days, It doesn’t really matter. Literature or otherwise, there is a story waiting to be conveyed and Potter took about eight books to getting a move on his lifelong relationship woes with Voldy.
And so Order changed things. Love, lack of love, I continued to read the books. I didn’t bother advertising it, but I did manage to read the tale through. When news broke of Dumbledore’s preferences, my interest claimed that she always knew. She also claimed that she always knew how to pronounce Hermione. For me, Hermione was always meant to be called out as HER, ME, ONIEEEEEEEEE. I had a good spell laughing at the alleged truth of cognizance of Dumbledore and how the names were meant to be called. I wasn’t in a position to judge. The first time I read the word SUBTLE, I thought it was pronounced SUBLE. This happened when I was in my mid twenties. So , yeah. I’ve been a bit of a villager for most part of my life.
Looking back at the twenty fantastic years that Mr Potter has existed in our world, his impact as a cultural pop icon can not be denied. The boy who lives, continues to inspire hope and faith in many others. Potter and his buddies do represent the charm and value of a strong friendship. As I write about potter, I remember the adverts for the Deathly hallows. The scene was around Harry and Her ME Onieee smooching and my dad walked in and I felt a little embarrassed and spontaneously blushed. My dad casually said, ‘And so they have grown up now’. We had a good laugh.
Potter to me is beyond all the magic and warm fuzziness that Potter is usually to the rest of the world. Potter to me is the twenty years of my life that I’ve had. I’ve smiled through it, I’ve broken down. I’ve shown courage and I’ve cowered under the weight of the world. I’ve enjoyed the movie Chamber of secrets and have sat through reruns of Deathly Hallows part 1. I’ve also loved reading the half blood prince. Snape was the MAN.
Potter is, and Potter will be remembered for a few more years to come. So whats your muggle fascination towards Potter? What does the world of Harry Potter remind you of ? What do you associate the memories to?
Karthik
blottedmind 