Chronicles of Kanjisheik

Kanjisheik at your service. I feel restless nowadays, I dunno why. Fingers itching to type something, SOMETHING!!! All you budding doctors out there, please diagnose me and please treat me! I dont wanna spend the rest of my life with 'Itching Fingers Syndrome'...

So lets come back to one of my favourite topics: what else, you guessed it right! Its HARRY POTTER. Yeah, I'm gonna say something about the literary phenomenon that took the world by storm and revolutionised reading in a way that avid bibliophiles had never imagined.

Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Book 7: not released as yet...

The writer being a certain Joanne Kenneth Rowling, a single woman with a child, who dint have a job and took to writing the manuscript of book one on napkin paper in a nearby café- and now barely nine years later after the copies of book one hit the streets of London, she is perhaps one of the most successful novelists around, earning millions from merchandise and the films of the Harry Potter series. Seems quite the fairy tale success story, right? Makes me wonder if someone might be writing a story of her now..

But then, I'm digressing again- it seems to be my favourite strategy; to play the fiddle while everything burns around me, a la Nero, but I hear someone say 'Hem,Hem' in my ears and so I'll go on with my quest of Harry Potter.. Harry Potter, a eleven year old orphan, with "ordinary bloke" written all over him, is in for a surprise on his birthday when a giant informs him that he is actually a wizard and supposed to go to Hogwarts to learn magic- and thus starts one of the finest yarns ever spun in English literature.

Rowling has a really vivid imagination and an equally good knack for creating an iron clad background. This really helps her, cos she is able to blend both the Muggle and the wizarding worlds in the unlikeliest of places. Her writing is fluid, usually very fast paced and keeps the reader hooked on a never ending roller coaster ride. It seems to reach into the child in all of us and the details in the fantasy makes it much more easier for our rational selves to accept.

Throughout the series, Harry Potter has several adventures and miraculous escapes, but in reality, he is engaged on a quest: he has to find the reason why his parents were murdered by Lord Voldemort, and how he himself managed to escape the Avada Kedavra spell, while You Know Who's magical powers were obliterated..

When I read the series, I was struck by the degree of similarity in the first two books. The third book does introduce a host of new characters and tells a lot about Harry's parents, and the series starts to become more interesting.Rowling's language really shines through in part four. And in the books since then, Harry is different- a much more mature person, probably due to the shock of seeing Cedric die and Voldemort reborn, and later see Sirius meet the same tragic end.

He is no longer the eleven year old orphan unsure of his place in the wizarding world, he has now matured into a confident young man, capable of thwarting Voldemort time and again.. And kudos to Rowling for this. The most interesting aspect for me in this series other than the incredible fantasy and stunning use of language, is this gradual change in Harry Potter. So many stories and their sequels have bitten the dust cos the authors were too afraid to change the formula.

The series has proved to be an engrossing read, capturing the imagination of both young and old alike. As the series draws to its inevitable end, rumours are rife that Harry will meet his gory end.. Will Rowling be forced to bring back Harry to life some time later, a la Sherlock Holmes? Only time will tell..

But the truth is- even if Rowling doesn't write a single book after book seven, no matter what happens, she is assured a place in the history books, as the wonderful creator of the one and only Harry Potter.