Harry Potter and the Spell of his Movies

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows opened on the big screen last Friday, and the world is lapping it up.
I remember I was excited when I was about to watch the movie of the first book, Philosopher's Stone(or Sorcerer's Stone for the Americans) because I had already read the first four books by then...yes I saw the movie very late, on a VCD, as I recall.
I was severely disappointed, and surprised as well, because a lot of my friends had recommended it to me.
Again, when I saw the second movie, I was disappointed.
Yet the world...the world of my friends that is, had largely loved these movies. Or had seemed to.
I realized that most of them had not read the books at that time, and a lot of them haven't by now either. Not all the books, anyway.
I feel a knot developing in my stomach when I realize that Harry Potter, for a considerable part of his fan following, is no one but Daniel Radcliffe. Don't get me wrong, he's a good actor, and he looks like Harry Potter as he was first illustrated on the cover of the Philosopher's stone. But Daniel Radcliffe isn't Harry Potter. Emma Watson (stunning although, she's grown up to become) isn't Hermione Granger. Rupert Grint isn't Ron Weasley.
No, Harry is Harry, Hermione is Hermione and Ron is Ron, as JK Rowling thought of them, wrote about them, brought them to life in her own mind, and in the minds of millions of her readers.
Nothing against the actors, but I fear the Harry Potter movies will be all that will remain in the minds of future generations of children, who grow up without the excitement of standing on the doorstep of a bookstore at 6 am(its India, they don't sell books at midnight, or atleast I've never bought one), waiting for the 5th, 6th and oh the excitement it was, waiting for the final book.

Look at the Lord of the Rings...amazing movies indeed, so much better than the Harry Potter movies, but half of the people who I know, do not know that they are actually books, written more than fifty years ago, by a genius who went by the name of Tolkien.
Oscars, these movies won... setting records, in fact, of Oscars won. These movies are but ghosts of the magic of Tolkien's hand.
How many of us know the joy of reading the Lord of the Rings, cover to cover, getting lost in its romance, getting absorbed into its mythology, its intricacy...its genius? Of reading about Frodo, standing at the brim of Orodruin, ready to cast the ring...the one ring, into the fires below, ready, but struggling with his demons, struggling with the evil that has slowly crept into his heart, from the day that Bilbo left him that ring.

I gave a little girl the first Harry Potter book once, on her eleventh birthday. She said she had already seen the movie. I implored her to read it. She did, and and a week later she called me and ecstatically told me how brilliant it was, and how she wanted to read the next one. I promised her, it too would be a gift. I plan to gift all of them to her, the seventh, Deathly Hallows, on her seventeenth birthday.
At least she will know the bittersweet joy of waiting for something that you love, looking forward to it.

The thing is, you form relationships with the characters who you read about in books, not with those who you watch in movies. It's a much more rewarding experience, is reading.

Yes, watch the movies, of course, and enjoy them.
But please... read the books, and love them! It seems like such a task, reading, to one who is not in the habit of it, but you see

'All that is gold, does not glitter...'
-JRR Tolkien

Immature, misread and misinformed

There once was a girl. Let's call her Miss Red.
There was also a boy, with whom Miss Red was friends. Let's call him Immature.
Miss Red and Immature had not always been friends. They had only met a few years ago. They had not had much of a relationship at first, mere acquaintances as they were for a long time. But as time went on, circumstances molded them into the best of friends, because, as they found out in the course of time, they had much in common. They liked the same music, read the same books, even shared the same taste in friends.
Things were good.
Immature was though, for some reason, a bit immature. Even as Miss Red had all through her life been misread.
Come to think of it, sometimes Immature treated Miss Red rather shabbily. But Miss Red was not someone to take this in her stride, and there was some conflict. Miss Red objected, and Immature relented.
Things were mostly good.
Immature had always rather liked this other girl, let's call her Miss Informed, and had always wanted, for lack of a better phrase, to get it on with her.
But Miss Informed was a snotty little bitch.

Excuse my french.

But she was.
Immature and Miss Informed had too been friends, for some time, and Immature had expressed his...express desire to her, to, for lack of a better phrase, get it on with her, many times.
Miss Informed though, had other plans. She played with Immature for a while, and then flushed him away, like so much used-toilet paper. This, obviously resulted in Immature getting upset. Even though, in all honesty, Immature had been rather immature in his desire to, for lack of a better phrase, get it on with Miss Informed in the first place.
Now where's Miss Red in all of this, I hear you ask.
She was right there, consoling Immature, trying to cheer him up, reassuring him there are better fish in the sea. Of course, since Miss Red was always misread, Immature saw this as a clever ploy by Miss Red to redirect his affections towards herself. This was probably because Immature was so immature.
This angered Miss Red, but she kept her anger to herself, realizing Immature was vulnerable. But Immature always had this nagging doubt about Miss Red's intentions in the back of his mind now. And since Immature had been so wronged by Miss Informed, his attitude towards the fairer sex deteriorated quite drastically, and sometimes manifested as an increase in the frequency of his unacceptable behavior with Miss Red.
Miss Red, you see, was not perfect... no, not at all, but she handled it for a while, as best she could.
But soon, as Miss Red neared the end of her patience with Immature, she realized that even though she cared quite a bit about Immature, she could not allow this to continue. So she confronted Immature and told him that either he should get his act together, or maybe it was time she and him went their separate ways.
Immature had nothing to say.
They opted thus, and by default, for a trial friend-separation.
But fate had its own game to play. Immature had long been planning a long trip to the real world, in order to get a feel for the environment there, so that when everyone grew up and went into the real world, to live out their lives, work and die, he would at least, be prepared. The plans had been made long ago, when things were much better between him and Miss Red. But now, they really weren't, and neither Immature nor Miss Red wanted to be the one to take the first step towards fixing their relationship. And so time passed by, and it came to when Immature had to leave for his trip.
And so he left, without saying good bye.

When he came back, many months later, things had changed. He realized he was now just another guy to Miss Red, and strangely, he realized she was just another girl to him.
And so they went, as they had never thought they would, their separate ways.

Such a waste.

But they lived happily ever after.


DISCLAIMER - All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. ;-)