To Harry,
Harry Potter and I go way back. I met him when I was in Class 6
separated just by a television screen. He was short, rather docile, and
bespectacled with hair that looked like it needed a trim. He looked ordinary. I
was fascinated and I did not know why. It started then, my affair with a wizard
on the magical ground of Hogwarts.
I loved him like only a 9- year- old could - innocent and oblivious
but happy to just look at his face. It was a very nice face. If you had asked
me if it was Daniel Radcliffe, the actor, or the character Harry I liked, I
wouldn’t know. For me, Daniel was Harry.
As I grew older, the way I began to look at him changed. It was
that of an adolescent, who is just beginning to understand and differentiate
between a girl and a boy. I found him attractive. I had started to read earlier
installments of books by then. I began to understand Harry, his quirks. I began
to like him for his flaws, and they were many.
I was in Class 11, when fourth installment of the book, ‘Harry
Potter and the Goblet of fire’ was made into a movie. The book featured a ball,
where Harry mustered his courage to ask his crush Cho Chang for a dance. He was
rejected of course. They were looking for Asians who would play the role of
Parvathi Patil, his date for the dance and Cho Chang, his first love, in the book.
I was split between which roles to play; regardless that there is no way I was
going to be cast. It was a worry of a teenage girl at the clasp of love. My
friends bore the brunt as I ranted non-stop until the casting was over. I did
not stop brooding for a long time.
A year later, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released.
I forced my dad to get the book for me as my birthday gift. He did not refuse. I
was in Class 12. Reading it was absolutely forbidden, for I had my final exams
that would determine my future. But how can I not.
Back then, I would rather learn curses than do mathematics. I
wanted to brew potions than do titration experiments in chemistry. I wanted to
tame wild beasts and dragons than dissect cockroaches and frogs. I wanted to
fly on a broom more than learn about rockets and its fuel efficiency.
Such was youth that keeps redefining the boundary for stupidity.
As always stupidity wins and I finished the sixth book first before my subjects
and of course it reflected on my final year scores. But I do not regret it.
I was stupid yes but you are allowed to be one when you are young.
Adults have way too many consequences to face. I was stupid and happy just
immersing myself in my fantasy with Harry and I’m happy I did so.
For, when I look back now I could laugh at myself and tell myself
that I have grown and come a long way. I’m no longer a giddy adolescent I was
back then. Nothing excites me as much. Precisely for those reasons, I cherish
those times when I pretended to study when I was actually reading the book. I
know now that these are the feelings that could only be felt then. Thank you
Harry for those memories.
For me, Harry is one of the very few links to my past that
connects all of me right from Class 6 till the time I was a Sophomore in college. While other links are either forgotten or faded away with time, Harry
continues to remain through my fragmented memories and tattered books.
As Harry turns a year older tomorrow, all those memories come
rushing and teleport me to early 2000s where I see a giggling, blushing
girl in pigtails I hardly recognise now. It is a sense of nostalgia one feels
when you go back to your roots. It is the same for me.
Now as someone inching towards her thirties, I still see the
bespectacled boy with hair that looked like it needed a trim, but in a man’s
frame and think, you have grown up to be a good man Harry. So have I.
With love, Swathi.
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