I have a confession to make. I was one of those kids who actually waited for their Hogwarts acceptance letter on their eleventh birthday. There, I said it. Call me stupid, impossibly-imaginative, childish or plain obsessed. I am eighteen now and guess what? I still don’t regret it! No, the letter never came. Yes, I was a tad bit disappointed. But no, I certainly don’t regret hoping that it would come. Here is why – because that tiny little tinge of hope kept me excited and happy for weeks. The very thought that something beyond the ordinary, something magical may just happen gave me wings. There was, obviously, the more logical and practical me screaming her lungs out constantly and expressing her displeasure. But for the first and last time, I chose not to listen to her. For all the people out there who just don’t understand what the big deal about the Harry Potter series was, I suggest you ask all the people who do. These books might not go down in history as ‘classics’. But they sure were a phenomenon. They may not be the best-endowed in grammar and literary devices nor are they exactly ‘enriching to the intellect’. However, they are pure entertainment and in their own subtle way, highly enriching at the emotional level. It simply gave people hope. Hope that maybe there is a world intertwined with ours, hidden in plain sight, that is so similar yet so different, full of magic and extraordinary things, totally disconnected from our mundane lives and where all your dreams are just a flick away. JK Rowling was successful where all others failed. She made people believe. She gave them hope and they grabbed on to it as tight as they could. They connected with the orphaned, bespectacled boy wizard with the lightning shaped scar on different levels. For them, it was more than the unfaltering friendship, the love or the triumph of good over evil. It was a world they could escape to. This non-existent world was, ironically, something a surprisingly huge portion of people today believed in and drew hope from, irrespective of nationalities, languages and other irrelevant barriers. Ask yourself when the last time was that the whole world, or at least a huge chunk of it, believed in something together and you’ll find the answer to why Harry Potter became a global phenomenon. He brought the magic back into our lives. He taught us to let go and believe in the impossible.
As for me, I still slip away into my magical hiding place where the biggest academic problem is how to turn water into wine, where I can fly around on broomsticks, my pet is an owl, where luck is liquid and mermaids exist in reality. Let’s just say an eleven year old boy came into my life one day and it hasn’t been the same since.
