The Book.

I was sick. I have problems breathing in when cough takes over and the same happened. Luckily, it wasn’t severe. And am good now and back. And nothing can be big about today than Harry as Harry Potter strikes. But, it’s the movie. This post is dedicated to the book series of Harry Potter and how I happened to read it and how I ended up being a big fan and what it feels like when all the seven are out there, published. Thought the gist might help those who aren’t interested.

I was a novel freak during my engineering days. I had a problem. If I read one of a particular author and happened to like it, I preferred reading all authored by the same person. And so it happened that I started with Sheldon and completed all of Robbins, Forsyth, Puzo, Doyle, Christie, Brown, Cohelo, Tolkein and Peter James. I tried Grisham, Archer, Cook and others but never liked them. I had to stop. I wasn’t aware of any other prolific ones at that point of time.

One day, I found my love reading Harry Potter. With a preconceived notion that potter was kid’s stuff, I joked and she insisted that I should start reading it. I didn’t have anything else to read for months and I started with the Sorcerer’s Stone. I found the story OK. I took up the Chamber of Secrets and since then I have never been able to stop. I was bowled over by the flow, plot, imagination, setting, concept, the world and all of it. Things as simple as the names of the characters seemed so perfect. It was always hard, holding the book in my hand, going patiently through the pages and waiting for those last predictable phenomenon of Dumbledore talking to potter. The magic always took me into another world of its own. “Filthy Mudblood” became my favorite expression of disgust for any mortal around. And after Half Blood Prince, Snape was my hero. My virtual existences in PC games always have Snape as my name. There was Voldemort, the greatest of the dark wizards and there was Dumbledore, the wisest of all and there was Potter, the bravest of them all. But they all did what they were supposed to. Snape brought the flavor to all of it. He executed the plans of the wise, fooled the darkest and helped the bravest. I can go and on and on……….I revised all the six parts, six times, while waiting for the release of the seventh part and it was worth it. I still continue reading it. It still feels so afresh with facts and details. I have seen a long queue of all ages, in my home city of Kolkata, at five in the morning, eagerly waiting with water and food for the book shop to open on the day a Potter book was supposed to be released in India. At that instance, I found them crazy. But soon I was one of them. I couldn’t help it.

I don’t want to stop. I can never stop. I feel so lucky to have read it and being born when Potter came into the scene. I didn’t like his movies. Three hours can never do justice to the talent and mastery of Rowling. She is and shall always be the best author I have ever read. I feel that as an ardent fan of novels and books, Potter and Rowling, will remain the best gift I was supposed to have in my lifetime on this earth. It can never be bettered. It’s perfection. I wish the same joy for readers who are yet to go through this immortal piece of imagination. If someone has gone through “The Lord of the Rings”, it says that the world is divided into two parts, people who have read it and people who haven’t. I guess, the world can more aptly be divided into parts, people who are potter-series fans and people who aren’t.
Sadly, all things come to an end. As the sixth one in the series takes the shape of a movie and releases in Indian screens today, I started reading the sixth one again. And I thought, I should not have a blog which doesn’t have a single post dedicated to Potter.

I still miss you HOGWARTS……and always shall.