Understanding Harry Potter

I have spent half of my school life convincing people that Harry Potter is not a children's story.Just because it had a boy fighting the evil,it doesn't necessarily mean it's the typical David and Goliath story or the prince defeating the witch for his princess.Harry Potter captured our imagination and it made us think of the virtues that matter,the relations that last forever and the moments that we cherish.It's based on reality,it is the reality with a veil of magic.

I started digging deeper to find out links between Harry Potter and the real world,I followed Rowling's website and started researching on the character backgrounds.The most popular story that we have heard till today is that Harry Potter and his magical world just happened to Rowling in 1990 on a train journey from Manchester to London.But the thing about fiction is even though it is fiction,it always has a connection with this world,where fiction is a necessity to escape from the wilderness of sorrow and struggle,into a place where we can get what we want,we see what our eyes want to see.

Fiction in the form of fantasy has given us the best books and though fantasy is often underestimated in literature for not having the exact essence of literature,the verbosity,the wittiness,the unpredictability,fantasy is the route to a child's heart and that's why it remains forever unblemished in memory.

Harry Potter's background lies in the forlorn life of it's very own creator,J.K Rowling.

Rowling was born on 31st July in the UK,the same day her brainchild,Harry is born.She was brought up on the suburban British streets like the one the Durlseys live on ,and she along with her sister,Di endured the similar childhood traumas and massive disappointments as the novel's protagonist.

Her strained relationship with her own father inspired idealized father figures,like Hagrid,Dumbledore and Sirius Black in the series.

Her mother had been suffering from multiple sclerosis since 1980,and she was never really there to protect her children-this made her create a strong woman character,Lily who sacrificed her life for her son.

Rowling had already started sketching Harry Potter in her mind before her mother's death,and after she died,it influenced the storyline much more deeply and the plot only darkened with time.

She says the absence of any meaningful relationship with her father and the loss of her mother have been the two of the most important influences on her writing.

After her mother's death, Rowling moved to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. There, she married television journalist Jorge Arantes, with whom she had daughter, Jessica. But the marriage failed after two years and Rowling succumbed to depression. 


Her deep depression inspired the creation of dementors, "the foulest creatures that walk this earth," who prey on people's happiness and suck out their souls in the Harry Potter series.

From her own words:

"I was definitely clinically depressed. And that's just characterized for me by, a numbness, just a sort of coldness and an inability to believe that you will feel happy again or that you could feel light-hearted again," she said. "It's just all the color drained out of life really."


Now if you look at the characters,apart from Voldemort who was completely evil and who killed for pleasure,the other characters are not entirely good or bad.They carry shades of gray.

Severus Snape was one of the most complicated characters ever created.Everyone considered him evil for his flagrant actions in his  past life.and no one other than Dumbledore had actually believed that he had stopped serving Voldemort.Everyone believed that he was incapable of love because of the stone-cold appearance,but deep inside he was a man who had always loved someone and without any kind of fear for life,he continued to evade Voldemort.
Inspite of his deep hatred towards James,he had protected Harry out of love for his mother.How true is that in our world?That often we judge someone for what we see,but very few have that insight to look beyond that face and see a person who has lost everything in life,and who clings onto the last ray of hope he can find.

Everyone considered James to be brave,but he was a person not meant to be idolized but detested,for misbehaving with Snape.He may have been a reformed person after marriage,a great friend and a loving father,but he wasn't perfect,and after the last Occlumency lesson,Harry stopped feeling proud of his resemblance with James.

Dumbledore who was once viewed as a saint,also had immense craving for immortality and power above all,he befriended one of the darkest wizards,Grindelwald and along with him he started searching for the Deathly Hallows,while his own family slowly fell apart.The obsession for power drove him mad,but not evil,unlike Voldemort.And only after the death of Lily and James,did he started believing what his true purpose in life was,he stood beside Harry,because in his heart,he had felt guilty for not being with his family and in the end he died saving Harry.

There is a time in everyone's lives,when we start realizing that the world isn't that simple,we have to protect ourselves from the people around us,that we start feeling vulnerable to emotions and we stop believing in everything we hear-and I learned that from Harry Potter,and after finishing the entire series,it seemed less imaginary,and more real,breathtakingly real!

Rowling's own life has been her biggest disappointment,prior Harry Potter, and it sort of opened her eyes to the evil that surrounds us,and hence,she created characters like Ron and Hermione,who has been the most transparent of all,who had sticked with Harry till the end.

 I don't know about others,but for me,Harry Potter is one of the greatest gifts to literature.And anyone who denies that,has never really understood it.

Diary

When I was small the only personal possession I ever had was a diary.I used to scribble drawings in it,occasionally poems that made no sense.But it was very dear to me,like my books,my toys.

This diary then became my companion,with whom I shared my anguishes,my love affairs and heartbreaks.I used to hide it in my cupboard behind my books lest my mother found about my little excursions.Unlike Anne Frank's diary it was much less resourceful,but it still had a name.I called it Frankie after the bossy girl from my favourite tv show,Sleepover Club.

It was where I could let my feelings find words;my secrets found shelter.

When I passed my class 10 board exams,I was desperately trying to convince my father to buy me a cellphone.most of my friends had it and I kind of felt very isolated without one.But,most importantly, I needed it to message someone I was in love with and there was no way I could talk to him using my parents' cellphone.

My cellphone never replaced my diary,but it did consume most of my attention.I was always on the lookout for a new text from my crush and my diary became the shoulder to cry on.I wrote small letters to him with an unrealistic dream that when I am gone,someday,he will search for me and then bam!this diary.Frankie will tell him how crazy I was about him and then he will fall in love with me.

Well,nothing like that ever happened.But then I purchased my own laptop and typing seemed a less tedious than writing.My first love certainly injected some sense in my deluded mind,and I stopped writing silly stuff in my diary.

I still have it though,I never sold it or left it in the store room along with old copies.Sometimes,when I find nice poems and beautiful words,I write them down.My handwriting has degraded a lot,but my diary is a relic indeed of love lost and found,of hopes and dreams,and a silent observer of my transformation from an immature lover to a rational one.

And I certainly intend to keep it with me,because however modern our technology might become,our heart feels more connected with those pages that smell of nostalgia and romantic desires,if you really want to know what is there behind the face of that stubborn engineer,you just need to dig a little deeper.There you will find stories of untold passion and hopes that lost their voice with time.There you will find dreams that have died young.There you will find poets and visionaries who still keep their lights on at night,to script their masterpieces,there you will find lovers who cannot speak but can write.

And then one day,this diary will fall in the hands of someone who will make a book out of it,well,you never know.
 

When woman means freedom

I was reading a short story called "Khata" by Rabindranath Tagore.A little girl called Uma gets married in an orthodox household where she is told to abandon her desires to read and write.Uma loved to write,she wanted to become a highly accomplished writer like her brother,but her dreams lost their meaning when she got married,and her diary was taken away by her husband who believed women only belong in the kitchen,their world only resides around their family.

Women's desires die with marriage,I often used to read in old stories.

But with the decadence of patriarchal civilization,women learned to forge their existence,although,a man is still considered the primary decision maker in the family.Everytime,I want to go out,my mother tells me to ask for permission from my father.I find it extremely vacuous.My mother is as much responsible for my welfare as my dad,then why is her opinion less valued?

If you are a Bengali,the you must have heard this-"meyeder buddhi hatute hoy"
(girl's intelligence lies in her toes)

A lot of people including our very own Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (who wrote the National song of India,Vande Mataram) felt this.They used to feel thet reigns of the household should never belong to a woman,because she will only bring disgrace.But there were people,who went ahead of their times and made pioneers out of women,the oppressed becomes the beacon of hope and she represents the goddess in it's truest meaning.

Let me share with you the perspective of one such man from the 20th  century.

In January of 1926, a reporter named John B. Kennedy interviewed Nikola Tesla about these very ideas. The piece was published in Colliers magazine under the title “When Woman Is Boss” and is discussed in Margaret Cheney’s excellent Tesla: Man Out of Time , which remains the most insightful and dimensional perspective on the great inventor’s mind and spirit.

After reflecting on the future uses of wireless technology and practically predicting the iPhone, Tesla points to the empowerment of women as one of the most significant effects of technology on the world of tomorrow:

"It is clear to any trained observer, and even to the sociologically untrained, that a new attitude toward sex discrimination has come over the world through the centuries, receiving an abrupt stimulus just before and after the World War.

This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior. The modern woman, who anticipates in merely superficial phenomena the advancement of her sex, is but a surface symptom of something deeper and more potent fermenting in the bosom of the race.

It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women."

 Tesla predicted the rise of women with the advent of technology and all his predictions have actually come true.Women conquer in the field of science,now they are encouraged to pursue their careers in the core engineering streams which were once considered Herculean tasks,tasks that only men can do;women are breaking records by climbing the highest mountains and crossing the English Channel.

But think about the small yet extremely noticeable discriminations that we face even today and that is inside our own home.

Do you go out without your husband's permission?Do you hang out with your friends more often when you are in a relationship?Do you enjoy the moonlight drive like your fellow male friends?Don't you feel intimidated by the presence of another pretty women at your partner's proximity?

Women have always been driven by the thought of being accepted and validated by the society she lives in;when it's her own home,she needs to follow her father;when she gets married,her husband becomes her world.

A celibate women faces the wrath of the society,she is often viewed as being characterless or infertile.

I have a sister-in-law who lost her husband a few days after her marriage.She has a daughter who never saw her father and she never had the opportunity to feel  a father's affection  because of her conservative in-laws who restricted her life inside their own family.Instead of encouraging her to get married again,they made her a figure of sympathy.She looks old and worn out.Her life would have been better without a husband too,but she doesn't enjoy the freedom of being a single woman either.

Sometimes I feel women are always stalked;the entire society observes her every move and if anything seems out of place,she is banished from some kingdom of perfect women.

And I am not just speaking of elderly people,but the young generation too who held utmost pride when it comes to defame a woman based on her choices.
I was a victim of that.I was humiliated by my own friends for leaving a guy who made my life miserable.

Women are advancing,but I think she is still considered very weak,fragile,I don't like the comparison with flowers because no,not every woman is born a flower,some are born like thorns too.They are born to challenge others and burn down the system;like the Joker,they are meant to expose the corruption inside our hearts.

I feel sorry for those women who apply fairness creams on their faces to find a perfect groom,those who apply make up to gain unnecessary attention,those who walk gracefully to present themselves as relationship materials,those who
diet to decrease their waist size from 28 to 26;and those who try to lose IQ points to have a wise boyfriend.


 Freedom comes from within,when you know that you don't need to be someone else to keep others in your lives,when you live with a burning dream and when you stop comparing yourself to others.

Freedom is very important,and once,you are free,you start viewing the world as your own oyster.

The storm

A few years ago,when I was in school,I used to watch a tv show called "Gaaner Opaare".It was extremely popular at that time because it was based on Rabindranath Tagore and how his songs have depicted the various phases of our life.

The story begins with a girl named Pupe,who is brought up under the strict governance of her grandfather.She is trained in Rabindra Sangeet and she grows up to become a reknown singer.Pupe's life is bound by the rules of her conservative household and there is no life beyond those four walls of her family.Her marriage is also fixed by her grandfather with a well-known guy named Pradipta who is the owner of a music company.Pradipta finds his soulmate in Pupe and Pupe finds him perfect for her too.

But then a storm named Gora steps in her life..

Gora is not one of those civilised men who are extremely courteous to the women around him,he lives life on his own terms,he makes parodies out of Rabindranath' s songs,he isn't polished or well-mannered,much to everyone's dismay.But he creates a huge turmoil in Pupe's heart.He conquers her soul with his luminous presence and makes her laugh,he gifts her the amazing gift of life,the way it should be lived and that is without any bounds.

Gora is not a gentleman and Pupe's family has no regard for someone like him in her life,but Pupe,falls in love with him for the first time in her colourless life.I still remember when she sang that song "Aaji ei boshonte,koto ful fothe,koto pakhi gay" (today in this spring,so many flowers bloom,so many birds sing)

Yes,it was spring in her life.Gora held her arms and taught her to spread the wings of fire,he served as the beacon who showed her the way beyond the locked doors,he took her by his side and asked her to run with him across the lush green fields like two mad lovers away from the crowd.

But it's hard to run away,when your life is being watched so closely by people who only want you to live by the rules and not with happiness.

Pupe gets engaged and Gora decides to abandon her forever.He realizes how small he is compared to Pradipta,he cannot give Pupe the pleasures she deserves and love alone won't suffice.

But Pupe decides to find him and get him back in her life.She forgets the responsibilities of a fiancee and she searches for Gora at every place possible till she finds him one day.She holds his hands and places them across her heart,and gives him the sign that he was always looking for.He belonged with Pupe and he was the one she always deserved.

When they got united again,the only words that I could recount were those said by Rose

"He saved me in every way a person could be saved"

Gora saved Pupe from the cruelty inflicted on her,from that point of view,he was her family;he was someone who saw the girl crying inside her,dying to break out every now and then.

Pradipta did lose her,he could have made a perfect husband,but he would have remained a loser forever in her eyes.

I believe if you love someone,you should never let them go,it doesn't matter where he came from,it doesn't matter where he belongs,because whatever happened,was meant to happen;that one road he chose to took for you made the difference.The rest should be forgotten.

And in that way,Pupe saved Gora too from being lost in the oblivion forever.She gave him a new identity and a new life.

She was a storm too,though a very gentle one.

Sometimes the storm is necessary to replenish our life with the advent of a new spring...

Growing up

 "Oh! Show me the way to the next little girl,oh! don't ask why"

When I look at my childhood photographs,I vividly recollect every moment that is preserved in them.But when I look back,3 to 4 years from now,I really don't remember a lot.I only see a huge gap of time with nothing much important about it,several losses,changed people and change in my own choices.

Growing up is sad.

When we are small,time makes a fool of us with memories to store in our head,but as we grow old,there is not much to store.Time passes so fast,that you can't actually remember what you did yesterday.

As we grow up,we stop hiding behind those doors and start confronting the real dangers,even if it means you are going to lose eventually.But facing the impossible is part and parcel of being an adult,it means you are ready to face  the world,when you aren't prepared,actually.It's like those tedious exams you sit for at he end of the month and when you look at the paper,you realize you have learnt nothing,nothing at all..

Sometimes,I wish I never grew up.I wish I could ask my mother to help me do my homework, or ask my father to put up those balloons and streamers on my birthday,I wish I could spend a whole weekend by the window and staring the shadow cast by the leaves,as the sunlight peeps through the tree,I wish I could slowly close the door behind me and join my friends at the playground.

I wish I could capture my thoughts in a camera and never let them go again.

I can't even imagine how my life is going to change by next year.My college life is going to end,I will join a new world of responsibilities.assisting people in solving their problems while I still don't know how to handle my own.May be these responsibilities are part of growing up,growing old enough to advise others but not being able to apply them in your own situation.

Growing up is an utter disaster.

The more you try to put everything in place,the more everything falls apart.

It's chaos,it's a mistake.