Waning magic ...

Years ago, I used to read Harry Potter books with zeal and enthuse, outside in my garden under the warm and pleasant sun with the pleasant realization that there were still a couple hundred pages of the escapades of Harry left to be devoured. It was the time when the magic of the boy wizard had started to take over the muggle-world and when JKR had started to buy new vaults for stuffing all the dough she'd started to make (at an alarming rate), what with Harry Potter movies, games and anything conceivable to the mind of the profit-seeking characters holed up in their lush offices at the top of their lush sky-scrapers. I read Harry Potter books twice, thrice, wait ... I've lost count of how many times I read those books that're enough to make the most verbose authors blush and yell, "But my novel's full of scientific research, not the imagining of a woman!" Really, point noted. The long wait for Harry Potter movies to be released in India used to piss me off and I'd to satisfy my hunger for Potter with, ah, un-authorized CDs; but I used to watch them on theater when they released and it was all pure fun for me, no matter what others said about the movies being nowhere near the books. I told them to go fug themselves as I bought the original DVDs of the same. The long gaps between the release of the books was painful and I used to satisfy myself - like 50 billion others, perhaps - by combing JKR's and MuggleNet's websites. I was so influenced by Potter that I even made a website dedicated to the Potter-phenomenon (I never got the chance of uploading it though, and I'm glad I never did ... the website was very immaturely designed: I was only 13). But that was back then. Today, I don't feel as attracted to Potter as I used to. I blame JKR's tendency of popping off too many kids - and consequently delaying the release of the novel - for that.

- AG.