The release of the new book ‘Harry Potter and the cursed
child’ brought back my memories of my journey with Harry Potter. It also has a personal meaning for me. So I thought I would rant on the same.
The first Harry Potter book was released in 1997. At that time I was just
entering my bachelors program in Engineering and I had not even heard of this
series. It was 2001 by the time I first came to know of these books and by that time 4 books were already out. I acquired the books and read them all back to
back over a two day marathon reading session. Having not yet fully been
initiated into the world of fantasy fiction at that point of life, I was
completely blown away. Over the next couple of years I had read the 4 books
over and over multiple times - the only books I have read so many times since my
childhood days.
It was quite a wait for ‘Order of the Phoenix’. My
grandfather expired around the time it was getting released. So I missed buying
it. However my team lead at work had bought it and he had finished reading within
a day and he lent it to me. Then again it was a long wait for ‘The Half Blood
Prince’. I actually managed to place a pre-order for this book at the local book store and
hence had it in my possession on the very day of release. But then a sudden wave of generosity struck me and I
ended up lending it to my little cousin to read first. She was not the maniacal
reader kinds and she took her own sweet time to complete it and that left me a week
behind the rest of the world.
The wait for the last book was so long that I had completely
forgotten Harry Potter for good by the time it was released. Also I had become
a complete fantasy buff in the years in between. So Harry Potter no longer held
any special fascination for me as such. When the last booking was due for released I was in my final trimester of MBA - I find it interesting how the first book was released in my first year of college education and the last during my last year. Someone within the campus managed to get a pirated soft copy of the book a day before the official release and it began circulating within the campus. Having always lagged the rest of the world, I could not resist
the temptation to go one up on the last book. So I ended up opening the pdf
file that landed in my mail box and sat through the night reading and managed to complete the book barely
hours before its release. And that marked my end of the Harry Potter journey.
Everyone was gaga about the movies as well. Somehow I could
not get myself to watch them – I just watched one of the movies – the first
part of the ‘Deathly Hollows’. I can’t say I was very impressed. I have always
wondered what J K Rowling would do after Harry Potter series. The series structure
was such that it could not extend beyond 7 books. So what would she do after
they were done I wondered. Wouldn’t her life fill with emptiness and
frustration at not being able to re-create the magic of Harry Potter? In large part,
my apprehensions have come true. I was not tempted to pick up ‘Casual Vacancy’.
And from what I heard, it did not make the kind of waves Harry Potter did. That is why I
guess she tried a different tactic - a different genre under a pseudonym. Maybe
she was hoping she could start as a ‘nobody’ and once again create the magic
all over again. But then that was not to be. In a connected world, she could
not keep her identity secret. And as far as I could make out, her success as
Robert Galbraith has been more on the back of her Harry Potter aura only than
on independent merit. I for one was not at all tempted to pick up any of her
non Harry Potter books. For me, it was always about Harry Potter and not about
J K Rowling. So Rowling outside of Harry Potter meant nothing to me.
So somehow I feel she is now stuck with Harry Potter for
good and has to live with him the rest of her life. How much ever she tries,
people will probably still talk of Harry Potter only. She is by no means the
first author to suffer this fate. Her illustrious predecessor from Britain
Arthur Conan Doyle had to undergo the same. He was just not allowed to think
beyond Sherlock Holmes. The author struggled desperately to put Holmes behind
him and focus on Professor Challenger and Sir Nigel. So much so in a desperate
attempt to get rid of Holmes, he had Moriarty fling him off the Reichenbach
falls in a deathly embrace. But no! Even death could not free him from Homes’
vice like grip. He had to revive him and bring him back in ‘The Return of Sherlock
Holmes’.
The sense of frustration is something I can relate to as
well at a personal level at a much smaller scale. Eight years ago, when I
started my blog, I wrote a series called ‘The Great Indian Bride Hunt’. This
series acquired so much popularity that gave me momentum to seriously take up
writing. But today, when people still praise that series so much even though I
have written so much more ever since, I wonder if I am also stuck with ‘Great
Indian Bride Hunt’ the way Rowling and Doyle are stuck with Potter and Holmes.
And more sad it would be if that were the case for despite it being my most
popular piece of writing, its popularity does not even match that of some of
the country’s top bloggers far from reaching anywhere near the iconic heights
of Harry Potter or Sherlock Holmes. Even if one were the discount the popularity
aspect, still it would be nothing short of tragedy for a complete unromantic like me who does not
even like series like ‘Friends’ and ‘How I met your mother’, to be best known
for relationship related humor.
Anyways coming back to Rowling, the hype around ‘Harry Potter and the cursed child’ go
on to reiterate how much Harry Potter has entrenched himself in public psyche
and how next to impossible it will be for her to produce something that
can exceed the popularity of Harry Potter. That is the curse she has to live
with for the rest of her life – a Midas touch of sorts. Harry Potter - the cursed child in J K Rowling's life.
