Over the past few days, I have heard more about Harry Potter than I did over the last 10 years. The hype surrounding the release of Book 7 is unbelievable. Among other unbelievable things is this article in the San Jose Mercury News about giving Harry a “proper send-off”. I began to read the article out of sheer curiosity. By the time I finished it, I was convinced that all the hype was unnecessary. To “hold “Goodbye, Harry” gatherings” and mock funerals seems utterly ridiculous to me. If there is one thing the Potter series has done to children, it is to teach them that death is a certainty. It tells the tale of an epic battle between good and evil and shows that many lives, some innocent and others not, will be lost in the process. When a series as realistic as this one ends, why should children go into a state of manic depression? It seems that when they do, they have not really learnt the lesson Jo tried so hard to convey. That “for the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.” If that is true, children would understand why the series has to end. They would understand that all good things must end at some point so that better things can take their place. By advising parents to hold mock funerals and memorial services in the memory of the fictional hero, I think psychologists and psychiatrists are underestimating the intelligence of children who read the Potter books. Perhaps, they have understood the point of the books better than we have as adults. Perhaps, they are not as dumb as child and family psychologists think they are.

Having said that, on to the second theme of this post. I recently saw the trailer of the forthcoming movie “Gandhi, My Father“. It’s tagline states that “one family’s tragedy was the price of a nation’s freedom.” Why is that, you may wonder. For the first time, a movie humanises Gandhi and talks about the complicated relationship he shared with his eldest son, Harilal. As usual, the political parties claiming uphold the Gandhian legacy have created a furore about the movie allegedly tarnishing Bapu’s squeaky clean image. Why is it so difficult for us to accept that the man who brought us independence through the mantra of non-violence may not have been the perfect human being we make him out to be? Does his failure as a father undermine, in any way, his contribution to the Indian freedom movement? The question I asked a few months ago of Indian crickets is valid in this context too. Why do we seek to deify those who do us good? Why can’t Gandhi be human, with his flaws and drawbacks? Why does he have to be God-incarnate to hold a place in our hearts? To me, Gandhi is a man. A great man, but a man nonetheless. Yes, his contribution to the freedom struggle was invaluable. But he had his faults. Who doesn’t? I don’t agree with many of his principles, but I still respect him. If I were to criticise his ideals, do I become the Devil’s advocate? I don’t think so. I certainly hope people don’t stop questioning what must be questioned in an attempt at blind reverence. Gandhi was a great man. He was a Mahatma. But even Mahatmas have their flaws.

While on a smelly 7-hour long Air India flight from Paris to Mumbai, one tends to try and distract oneself by reading. And that is precisely what I did. Before I proceed, let me register my disappointment with the state of India’s shining national carrier. After a highly annoying conversation with the Air India Paris representative about baggage allowances and laptop computers, I boarded the flight with an armload of magazines and newspapers. The flight’s condition gave me serious doubts about its air-worthiness and made me wonder if Air India had at all bothered to maintain its fleet since it first acquired the aircraft in the 1970s. Trust me, it was that bad.

Anyway, back to the point. Once I got over the shock of seeing the state of “Air India shining”, I began to read the highly interesting, but atrociously expensive Time Magazine. The article in question was about the efforts of the “Harry Potter Brain Trust” to keep up the net of secrecy surrounding the much-hyped release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. While the process in itself was extremely interesting, what spurred me on to writing this post was the conclusion of the authors, Lev Grossman and Andrea Sachs. They ask whether the publishers of the Harry Potter books are not under-estimating the power of the same series they are working so energetically to promote.

This was a particularly interesting question. If people only read books to find out the story and the ending, nobody would read the same books more than once. Such is not the case, as we all know. Dickens, published many decades ago still holds a sway over lovers of books. Some books are classics and we never tire of reading them. I have read David Copperfield and many times over and the books hold the same appeal today as they did all those years ago, during the first reading. To cite more examples, the story of Iliad and Odyssey are so famous that they must have become boring by now. But no, they continue to inspire the production of such blockbusters as Troy and Gladiator. The same goes for the Potter books. Why then, are we obsessing with secrecy? Why are we so paranoid about spoilers on the Internet affecting our enjoyment of the books? So what if we do find out the ending? Do we not read a book simply because we want to read it irrespective of who killed whom and who defeated whom?

As a student of literature (ex-student, but that’s beside the point), I find that it only makes sense if Harry finally defeated the evil Voldemort. Why would Jo create the character only to have him defeated at the hands of the most powerful and evil sorcerer ever? From a purely literary perspective, that is the only thing that would make sense. The good must always triumph over the bad. That is poetic justice. And not even J K Rowling would throw us a googly on that. That brings us back to the original question. What is the point of reading. The point is to spend time with the book and enjoy the time thus spent. It is appreciate and even experience a good book. And Harry Potter, is a good book.